New Cars Don't All Come With Dipsticks Anymore, Here's Why
https://www.jalopnik.com/1861552/why-new-cars-dont-have-dipsticks/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca219
Comments117https://www.jalopnik.com/1861552/why-new-cars-dont-have-dipsticks/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
New cars absolutely do have dipsticks; they're the ones designing them.
Notwithstanding the potential for software bugs or other issues inherent with monitoring oil levels only digitally, monitoring just the oil level is not the sole purpose of the dipstick. Being able to physically see a sample of the engine oil is a vital diagnostic tool and can alert an owner or mechanic to a head gasket problem or other oil contamination issue, or if something is grinding metal shavings into the oil, etc.
For what it's worth I have yet to actually physically see a new vehicle without an oil dipstick. I guess they're out there, but so far I've been lucky. But I have already had quite a few automatic transmission equipped cars without a transmission dipstick cross my path, and that's already enough of a pain in the ass. If you're lucky there's a side plug in the transmission case you can use to check the fluid condition and level (after crawling under the vehicle...) but in a lot of cases there isn't even that -- your only recourse is to drop the transmission pan off entirely, which causes you to lose all the fluid in the process. And you'll probably also have to replace the gasket while you're at it. Needless to say, this is an incredibly moronic design decision.
I thought it was hilarious when I saw that Briggs and Stratton has been selling small engines featuring "no oil changes needed" (or possible). They advertise that it's "oiled for the life of the engine" ... well, by definition, yes, that's like saying "if you light a man on fire he'll be warm for the rest of his life". These companies are so predatory and transparently trying to turn durable products into disposable replacement services, it's unbelievable.
Can confirm; I used to manage a hardware store with an attached small engine repair shop. There's a reason Briggs and Stratton abbreviates so readily to "BS."
They've been trying to do the absolute bare minimum possible to maximize profits and making their machines flimsy and deliberately uneconomical to repair for several decades, now. All I can say is that we ought to be thankful for aftermarket parts.
IMO Briggs started losing their way with those automatic throttle engines that always wind up surging over and over for me. BRRRRrrrr BRRRRrrrr BRRRrrrr over and over.
IIRC that's eithera damaged fuel pump diaphragm or a sticking auto choke valve. Either way its like 10 minutes and less than 1$ to fix using a common Phillips screwdriver.
It seems to be mostly a euro thing. BMW stopped using oil dipsticks nearly 2 decades ago. Land Rover also somewhere in the late 00's.
But I agree it's a moronic idea. Not only does it prevent you from checking oil condition like you said; if it's after an oil change, it takes about 15min just to check the level (and another 15 if you messed it up). At $150+/hr shop rates, that adds up.
I was about to make this joke: "That's just not true. My 2008 BMW had a... holy shit, that car is nearly 2 decades old now." Then I went to confirm, and that car did NOT have a dipstick. The car came with 5 years of "free" service and never gave me a day of trouble, so I never realized it didn't have a dipstick. That's probably a major reason it was removed, since even a DIYer like me who likes to work on things myself never even tried to use the dipstick in 4 years.
Do you take it to the shop for oil changes then? I check my dipstick every time?
I used to be a lube tech in a different life 15 years ago and would occasionally see vehicles without dipsticks. Like you said the German brands like BMW and Mercedes but also Chrysler vehicles like the 300 and Magnum had a tube for the transmission dipstick but no dipstick inside of it just a cap on the tube.
At that time, Chrysler was owned by Daimler and shared a lot of stuff with Mercedes.
The NAG1 transmission some 300s used in Europe at least, is in fact the venerable Mercedes 722.6
That transmission was used in the US as well, before they switched to a ZF trans.
Isnโt that the point? The service department makes more money.
My wife has a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The AC condenser got a leak in it and it was going to be over $2k to fix in a shop. I took it on myself to save money. The condenser mounts to the back of the radiator, so I had to get at it by removing the bumper and everything between that and the engine block. Also attached part of the radiator is the transmission cooler. Unhooking everything meant that I was going to lose some fluids, but that was fine, I'd top them off and pay to have refrigerant added.
After I reassembled, I when to check the trans fluid levels, and couldn't find the dipstick. It turns out, like you said, if you crawl under the vehicle, on the back of the trans pan is a bolt you can remove, and if you have a special dipstick that you buy separately for this sole purpose, you can stick it in there to check levels. There's not way to add fluid without pumping it in there, but at least you can see how much you have.
Since I only lost less than a quart, I took it into the shop, explained what's up, and asked for it to be topped off. The shop guy calls back later, and told me that to do the trans fluid, the filter is only sold with a whole new pan, and because Chrysler, the fluid cost like $40 a qt, and I needed like 15 to fill it. It still cost more than $800 to just do that, then more than $500 for the refrigerant. I still saved about $500-1k in parts and labor for what I did, but, the lack of dipstick and fill tube was an extremely inconvenient and expensive thing.
You don't need a disptick, you just fill it until it starts coming out of the hole. Lots of heavy equipment works this way.
Jeremy Hunt knows what's up
And if you manage to position yourself right you can get a face full of gear oil.
Note: make sure you're further away than you think you have to be, oil doesn't always flow how you'd expect.
I love this design, this way when your radiator starts to fail you get water in your transmission and destroy it with the strawberry milkshake of doom.
Like 99% of automatic transmission vehicles have a radiator built this way. Even my 1995 Camry had a radiator like that (manual transmission though).
Well the good news is your trans should last a little longer now that some of the fluid has been replaced.
Your first line made me laugh out loud!
And yes, the enshitification is real.
Why would you put a dipstick in a EV? Sounds like a good design decision to me.
I think we can all safely assume that EV's are not relevant to this discussion.
Just to fuck with people I'd put one on the blinkers
next to the blinker fluid tank
On the bottom of it actually
I like you!
Hey I appreciate it :-)
Ah yes, the old "you're too stupid to do anything by yourself, so we kindly prevent you from trying"
I would argue that it adds a new failure point, and a catastrophic one at that.
Yes, many hunans don't monitor their oil properly. I've seen some destroy engines because they thought the low oil light could be ignored for a week.
Even if you still had the dipstick, owners would become reliant on the sensor and grenade the engine when it gets it wrong. Remember how Teslas had hoods that flew open while driving? The problem wasn't the latch. The problem was owners relying on a crappy sensor.
I mean, I honestly don't have a problem with a notification telling me I need to top off my oil, or telling me I've driven enough that it is time for the scheduled maintenance. I just also want to be able to manually check the oil level with a dip stick.
To be fair, when you drive a dangerous vehicle on a public road, you're not only putting yourself in danger...
I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever trust people to do their own repairs, but just thought i'd play devil's advocate
I mean, yeah, most people probably don't know what they're doing but does that mean that no one should be able to fix their own stuff any more?
Literally said the opposite.
The article is really lazy about citing its sources.
Are these some sources in the room with us?
This is like an eighth grader padding out a book report.
Tl;dr: Here's a higher quality source: Why the Reliable Dipstick is Sliding into Obsolescence
I have a better source:
MONEY
My wifeโs electric car doesnโt have a dipstick.
Unless you're sitting in it. ;)
Why the clickbait? Just put why in the title or post description
Let me guess, this Digital Measurement is only availible to CeRtIfIeD tEcHnIcIaNs iNtO wHoSe aSsHoLe we pUsHeD oUr fInGeR at lEAsT 30 Cm?
Well, currently it's available on the dashboard. So no, no quite. But eventually, yeah it's pretty easy to predict it's heading the way you were thinking, just give it time.
I don't like it because:
Exactly
Right now there is no better detection system than in
I've had a car with where the oil pressure sensor failed; combine that with an oil leak, and you quickly have a major problem. So, what happens when the sensor telling you the oil level fails? A dipstick is extremely unlikely to ever fail to work correctly, so...?
You would think an engineer would understand this.... I assume this is a decision from management.
"Grok told me this was the right thing. Nom nom, this superglue bathsalt pizza is delicious"
The Engineer was also told they would get a bonus if they could make maintenance more common and more expensive under the guise of improved technology.
Engineers are people like everyone else and some people have no qualms fucking over other people for money.
Back when I worked at a BMW store we had to, after changing the oil, start up the vehicle and get it up to temperature before it would give us a reading. Several times the vehicle caught on fire for some reason during this process. So fucking stupid.
The real reason is that owners would not reseat the dipstick properly, which would cause a vacuum leak and a lean fuel mixture that would trigger the CEL.
But you can't expect Jalopnik writers to know basic facts like this.
That is absolutely piss-poor design. But definitely a BMW thing to do.
I mean, easily catching fire is a thing since German tanks in WWII, so yes.
Good tech.
No, see, they just relocated the dipstick. You can locate it just behind the steering wheel, right above the driver's seat.
PEBKAC.
PEBCAC (car and chair lol)
Because manufacturers are scummy, that's why.
I've wondered this for a while and this seems like a good time to ask: Do electric cars use motor oil in the same way as an internal combustion vehicle? Like do you need to get oil changes in an all electric the same way and have a need for a dipstick?
Electric cars do have oil that will ultimately need changing but it's less exposed to contaminants than the engine oil in a internal combustion engine and therefore will last a lot longer. EVs typically have a reduction gearbox and differential and these will require oil changes in a similar fashion to a manual gearbox or differential in a ICE vehicle - i.e. barring exceptional circumstances it will last long enough to get out of warranty but don't believe it will never need changing.
Nope. The only fluid I worry about in my EV is windshield wiper fluid.
No brake calipers or power steering onboard?
Hmm do brake calipers age? Youโre not really using your brakes during normal driving.
Power steering and other hydraulics would need changing eventually.
Brake fluid is hygroscopic and will accumulate water over time despite being in a nominally sealed system. Water in solution with brake fluid noticeably lowers the boiling point which leads to issues under repeated braking (e.g. down long steep hills) as the fluid boiling means you lose braking capacity in that circuit.
You should ideally be changing the brake fluid every few years (2-3 being the typical recommendation) and that applies even if the brakes are used less often.
Seems like 60k miles for brake fluid replacement and 80k miles for low conductivity coolant replacement. Then also replace the normal coolant at 120k miles. This is for an Ioniq5.
I feel like most electric cars donโt need to use brakes going downhill. The regen is heavy enough to maintain a reasonable speed.
True, and ICE cars don't need to use brakes on long hills either. Use your transmission; that's why they put those manual shift features into the car
You can use DOT 5.1 to significantly increase that wet boiling point, but it's expensive for normal car use. I usually use it in my motorcycle, since I've experienced brake fade on that before, and it's... Not fun.
Huh? In here you can get DOT5.1 for the same price than DOT4. Roughly 10โฌ per litre, depending on brand and how big bottle you get.
Not where I am; DOT 5.1 costs 2-3 times as much as DOT 5 locally.
DOT 4, $.375/oz.
DOT 5.1, $1.42/oz.
It's 3.8x more expensive to buy DOT 5.1 locally.
Eventually, you'll have to top up your blinker fluid as well.
Oh, dip!
(Pun intended)
And the blinker one right? EVs still have that afaik.
Got my mechanic to replace the transmission fluid in mine after 80,000km, cost $90NZD
I'm not sure if this is universally true but I've never seen a fully electric vehicle that uses motor oil. Hybrid vehicles with an internal combustion engine and an electric drive train would still need it, of course.
Not having to take my car for oil changes is bliss.
Wait, what? At least on every car I've owned, the recommended interval for a transmission fluid change was about 100k mi. Are most people buying a new car after less than 100k of use? That seems ridiculous! My Corolla is almost at 250k now, I've had it since 2015, and I'm expecting her to hit 1m mi before I put her out to pasture.
i have oil in the differential that needs occasional replacement
Oil is essential. However, those manufacturers that claim you have to change synthetic oil three times a year are full of shit.
Depends on how much you drive, and what the recommended interval is. If the interval is 7k miles, and you drive 18k in a year, yeah, you need to change the oil 3x/year.
It seems to me that counting the number of cycles each makes, and basing your intervals off that would make more sense than mileage. If I'm constantly running at high RPM, that should require more frequent oil changes in terms of mileage.
I know it can last longer than that, but I think there is a benefit to doing so even if it doesn't need changed that often. It's the same reason I have my mechanic do my oil changes instead of doing them myself. It's so that they can look at the rest of the car and let me know about problems before they become a much more expensive fix. Kinda like going to a doctor for a yearly checkup and blood work.
I can fix almost anything on a car if I know what the issue is and have the shop manual, but I don't work on cars enough to know all warning signs or quickly diagnose things.
However, I do realize how difficult it can be to find a mechanic that is trustworthy, competent, and reasonably priced. I'm generally not a fan of dealership mechanics or the places that are dedicated to cheap oil changes. Not saying none of them have good mechanics, but it can be hit or miss.
That chronological duration is more of an estimate based on how much the "average" car may be driven and is just to give someone an idea of the frequency.
The standard for cars built for synthetic ("conventional" cars may have a bit more susceptibility to contamination, so they normally have shorter durations) usually usually go for 10-15k miles (~16-24k km). So going 30-45k miles in a year isn't really unheard of. (Some cars are much less, while others like company cars/taxis can be more than double)
This sounds like an old Mercedes problem: Why even having a dipstick when there isn't any drain bolt? The Mechanic sucks all the oil from the top using a vacuum. Grime buildup down in the oil pan? Ain't care! The car will break anyway, once it's out of warranty.
the vacuum oil change is a standard in watercraft, so its not that revolutionary
I hated raising my VW Jetta so I would oil change it with a hand pump vacuum, it worked great
Woah... I'd say it's time for a major modification... I wouldn't be able to deal with owning something so dumb.
many small motorbikes in southeast asia are like this. i do not understand the design
.
This is a reactionary response, you're just arguing, slow down a bit.
Do you see a value in a check engine light that tells you something is wrong in between full inspections? This is similar, this is telling you there isn't enough oil and damage is occurring before you get a chance to inspect the dipstick.
It's not planned obsolescence unless they also make it unreasonable to service. We already expect to routinely service engines, and they are already very complex and full of sensors, sure this is adding to the complexity but it's relatively pretty minor.
The argument being made, and I agree with it, is that the benefits of an additional long-serving sensor way outweigh the con of having one additional sensor in your car. You get early warning before damage occurs, you get built in fraud protection when you're changing your oil at a shady chain, you eliminate a direct access port for dirt to contaminate the oil.
Yeah, that's just how it goes as the engine becomes more complex, leaving a dipstick there is not gonna change that...
I hate all these automatic sensors in new cars. I don't usually buy new cars, I get ones that are a few years used. Almost all of them have a light on the dash for a "tire error" because the stupid sensor has died and no one in their right mind wants to spend $300 to replace a thing that tells you your tire pressure is low. Plus, the things die in a few years anyway.
I just do the Homer Simpson solution and put a bit of black tape over the tire error light.
$300? A TPS sensor replacement should cost like $75 including the sensor itself.
About $300 is what the mechanics in the area usually charge. The dealership is more.
$70 at Discount Tire.
Each?!?!
Fuck that. I'll pay $300 for the set and let them do the work for me. LOL
Yeah, $70 for one sensor installed is pretty cheap. Is your $300 number for all 4? Because that's more expensive than Discount Tire's price...
They are like 50 bucks for all 4 tires on ebay. Just get a wheel shop to install it.
Yeah bro let me just eyeball the difference between 32 psi and 36 psi with my fucking laser eyes.
That's complete robbery. Go to a tire shop.
A tire pressure sensor sensor? And the tire pressure sensor sensor includes the sensor itself? ๐
TPMS = Tire Pressure Monitoring System
So yes, "TPMS sensor" is a valid term.
My wife has a 2016 Honda Odyssey, and having grown up working on cars because my dad was a mechanic, I was shocked to learn that there is no transmission fluid dip stick. It's considered a closed system and never needs to have the fluid changed, allegedly.
It's a lifetime fluid! For the life of ur transmission! If it'll make it to 100k miles they could care less what happens after that. When your 16 odyssey needs a transmission at 130 are u gonna put 6k into it or go buy a other car?
The U660F transmission in my wife's 2015 Highlander doesn't have a dipstick. Luckily that transmission is solid and easy to service anyway, you just need a skinny funnel to fill it.
Knowing the exact oil level is very important for new cars. The piston rings are now made of softer metal to get a few more mpgs. If you overfill oil, you will get blow by, damage the rings, and start burning oil. Toyota now has an involved process of changing oil, running the engine, then topping off the oil while the engine is hot so as to not overfill. But not even my dealer follows that official procedure Toyota put in their manual.
If the dealer isn't doing that and you know about it what are we even talking about. Pretty casual well I'm paying them to fuck my engine oh well anyway
Just forcing more people towards mechanics. Canโt see levels or if there might be an issue with a lubricant, so if you burn up a transmission, guess you gotta buy a new one.
Sounds like a scam by big oil to sell more oil.
my 2008 BMW doesn't have a dipstick
Sure it does, it is in the driver's seat.
Wrong. That's dipshit. Subtle difference.
In the UK "dipstick" has been a mild insult for a long time.
haha yea its a COCK for your ASS lmao
it's a sweet silver E93 with no damage and still under 75k miles. It's a sweet transformer!
It only cost $12k but looks and drives like a $50k car
My cyber truck doesn't have a dipstick and I'm mad as hell about it. I bought it to feel like more of a man and I feel like less of man without a dipstick.
I thought the dipstick in a cybertruck is usually found behind the steering wheel
it's still got at least one or two USB ports, you could still plug in Lil trythis
This reads like more AI slop. I miss when Jalopnik had real articles.
This reminds me of funny American commercial from when I was a kid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5ms9PJDNY
Because I run electric?