Let’s talk about 2015 Ford F-150 oil and fluids! In 2015, the F-150 was neck-and-neck with the Chevy Silverado 1500 on every ranking agency’s list. Depending on which list you looked at, one of these two trucks was the king of the hill. The F-150 is a great vehicle that gets high marks from owners.
Ford’s 2015 Ecoboost engine had a few design “quirks” to it that were not mentioned in the owner’s manual. Because of this, even Ford technicians were taken by surprise by a couple of these things.
If you’ve just bought a 2015 Ford F-150 and you’ve never changed the oil on an Ecoboost engine before, you need to know about these quirks, so that you don’t break a part or end up putting too much oil in.
Even if you’ve been doing your own oil changes for years, you’ll want to glance through the Oil Change section below to learn about these design features.
2015 Ford F-150 Trims
The 2015 Ford F-150 was available in a whopping eight separate trim packages. Some of the trims were doing double duty with Ford’s HD (“Heavy Duty”) Payload Package. Ford added the HD package to trims available for fleet and commercial use.
If you see “w/HD Payload” on a trim style, it means that trim has the larger V8 engine, a heavier gross vehicle weight (GVW), and a heavier hauling and towing capacity. Those are the major differences between each standard trim and the HD Payload trims.
Here are the eight various trim packages for the 2015 Ford F-150:
- XL
- XL w/HD Payload
- XLT
- XLT w/HD Payload
- Lariat
- Lariat w/HD Payload
- King Ranch
- Platinum
The standard Lariat trim is the only version with the smaller 2.7L V6 Ecoboost engine. The XL and XLT trims each came with the 3.5L V6 Ecoboost engine. All five of the other trim options have the larger 5.0L V8 FFV engine.
The 2.7L V6 Ecoboost offers a little more horsepower than the 3.5L V6 in the XL and XLT trims, but all three versions get the same 17/22 city/highway gas mileage. The 5.0L V8 provides a much bigger boost to horsepower, but with a slight 17/20 hit to gas mileage.
Oil Type
The type of oil that your 2015 Ford F-150 takes depends on which size engine it has in it:
- 2.7L V6 Ecoboost: 5W-30 oil
- 3.5L V6 Ecoboost: 5W-20 oil
- 5.0L V8 FFV: 5W-20 oil
Capacity
This brings us to the first of the “quirks” when it comes to Ford’s Ecoboost engines. The oil capacity numbers here are accurate. These are not typos. They’re the same numbers that you will see in your 2015 Ford F-150 owner’s manual, and again — they’re accurate!
- 2.7L V6 Ecoboost: 6 quarts
- 3.5L V6 Ecoboost: 6.3 quarts
- 5.0L V8 FFV: 7.7 quarts
The first quirk is this: When you pour the recommended amount of oil into your Ecoboost engine, you must wait at least 15 minutes before checking the dipstick. If you are used to doing your own oil changes, like most of us, you probably pour the oil in and immediately check the dipstick. If you do this with an Ecoboost engine, the dipstick comes out completely dry.
You have to wait at least 15 minutes for the oil to make its way through the complex twists and turns of the Ecoboost engine before it even starts to register on the dipstick.
When the new 2015 Ford F-150 trucks were brought in for that first oil change a few years ago, a lot of technicians overfilled the reservoir because they thought something was wrong. What’s the first thing you do when the dipstick comes out dry in that situation? Pour more oil in, naturally!
But with the Ecoboost engine, you just have to wait. Walk your dog, play a game on your phone or find something else to do with your life for 15 minutes so that the oil can make its way through and register on the dipstick.
Change
Here we are! The moment of truth! It’s time to change the oil in your 2015 Ford F-150. Before we walk you through the steps, we want to point out three important things.
First, make sure the engine is cold before you start. The plug in the oil pan is going to come out much easier than you might expect. If hot oil pours out on your skin, you’ll be running for the nearest sink, yard sprinkler or another water source to try to get it off of you. And that takes all the fun out of changing your own oil.
Second, if this is your first time changing the oil on your 2015 Ford F-150, have a larger receptacle than you think you might need on hand to catch the oil as it drains. This is because of the quirk highlighted earlier in the Oil Capacity section of this article.
If the last person who changed the oil on your truck didn’t know about the Ecoboost issue with the dipstick, they might have put a few “extra” quarts of oil in. You don’t want to use a six-quart receptacle to try to catch eight or nine quarts of oil.
Third, remember that the name of the game is “light touch.” Thanks to the engineering ingenuity of the guys at Ford who made the Ecoboost engine, you no longer have to grunt, strain and make veins pop out in your forehead in order to loosen the parts to change the oil on a Ford F-150.
Don’t jump into this project thinking you’ll have to crank on something to muscle it apart as you did on older Ford models. The engineers did a really good job on this stuff, even though it’s a little quirky to get used to.
Getting Started
A really nice feature about the 2015 Ford F-150 is that it has great ground clearance. You may not even need to raise it up on a jack or a floor lift to change the oil. The first thing to do is set your parking brake. Then, you’re going to remove the panel on the undercarriage that sits in front of the oil pan. It’s a big, square panel attached with four simple wingnut screws. Remove the screws and set them aside with the panel. You should be able to see the square, black plastic oil pan now.
The Quirky 2015 Ford F-150 Oil Pan Plug
The plug in the oil pan is yellow, so it stands out very well. It’s on the side of the oil pan, rather than the very bottom. (When the plug comes out, the oil will be streaming out sideways in that direction, rather than straight down.) It has a recessed square hole in the plug. If you’re used to working with tools, we already know what you’re thinking. You think you’re going to insert a drive ratchet into that square hole and crank on it with all your might and power to loosen the plug.
Don’t do this.
Instead, try pinching the two wings on the sides of the plug with your thumb and one finger. Then, give the plug a simple, gentle counterclockwise twist. It will turn about 270 degrees to the left (not even a full circle) and then pop out. The oil should be draining nicely into the receptacle that you placed under the oil pan now.
Check the O-ring on the plug. That’s the round, black piece of rubber around the yellow plastic plug that sits inside the oil pan. If it’s in good shape, then you have nothing to worry about. If it’s broken or heavily frayed (which shouldn’t be the case for several more years, but you never know), then it’s time to buy a replacement at the parts store.
Changing the Oil Filter
As the oil is draining, you can use that time to change the oil filter. The filter on the 2015 Ford F-150 drops straight down into its slot, so you don’t have to worry about working at a diagonal. The cap on the filter is exactly 27 mm, so if you have a ratchet that size, it’s the perfect tool for this job.
You can also loosen the filter with an adjustable wrench, but because there’s not much “elbow room” to access the filter, you’ll have to use a lot of baby-sized twists to do the job.
The filter is rated at 18 foot-pounds, so like the cap on the oil pan, it doesn’t take a lot of strength to loosen the old one or tighten the new one. The filter had three concentric O-rings, so after the first one is released, you should be able to twist the filter out by hand. It might be a little messy, but use two hands when lifting the filter out of its place, in case the filter separates from the cap.
The new filter should go in easily as long as you have it lined up straight. You can use some spare oil to lube the three O-rings on the new filter if necessary. Do not put a lot of pressure on it or try to really crank the filter into place. So long as the filter is seated straight, the O-rings should do their job and it requires almost no pressure to tighten it into place.
Refilling with New Oil
Once the new filter is in place, the old oil should have fully drained from the pan. Crawl back under your 2015 Ford F-150 to reinsert the yellow plug. Simply pinch the wings and reinsert it. After, give the plug about a quarter-turn clockwise, you should hear a “click” sound. That’s the plug properly clicking into place. Continue turning it to the right until it’s been hand-tightened. Now it’s time to pour the new oil in.
Open the cap on the engine and pour in the recommended amount of oil for your engine size. Don’t overfill. Replace the cap. Then, you must wait 15 minutes before checking the oil level on the dipstick.
We realize that this feels like an eternity at this point because you just want to get the job done and move on to something else. Consider reading some more interesting articles here on Vehicle History to fill the emptiness in your life, as you wait for 15 whole minutes!
After 15 minutes, check the dipstick on your Ecoboost engine. It should be showing the proper fill level.
Finishing up
Crawl back under your 2015 Ford F-150 and check around the plug to make sure no oil is dripping out. If everything looks normal, the plug is seated properly and you have successfully changed the oil on your Ford F-150, despite the quirks of this very good engine. Don’t forget to replace the panel that covers the oil pan, by screwing it back into place.
Reset
We should take a moment to say “Thank you” to Ford and all of the other automakers that have decided to trust DIY home mechanics with the secret knowledge of how to reset the “Change Oil” light on the dashboard. Ford and some companies have now made this process extremely simple.
You no longer have to juggle a set of oranges while humming an obscure tune to make the light reset. You don’t even have to pump the gas pedal a secret number of times to reset the “Change Oil” light. (Not that we’re teasing Jeep Wrangler or anything).
Here are the simple steps to reset the “Change Oil” light in a 2015 Ford F-150:
- Sit down in the driver’s seat and turn the ignition on.
- Use the driver control buttons on the left side of the steering wheel to scroll through the menus.
- Select “SETTINGS.”
- Scroll through that menu and select “VEHICLE.”
- Scroll through the next menu until you reach “OIL LIFE RESET %.” Select that option.
- Select “OK.”
That’s it! You can turn the ignition off because you have just successfully reset the “Change Oil” light on your 2015 Ford F-150.
Fluids (Transmission)
Every Ford F-150 made since 2009 uses the same “Filled for Life” 6R80 automatic transmission. This is good news for most people because the transmission is expected to last for the entire lifespan of the truck. The exception to this is if your 2015 Ford F-150 falls into the class known as “Severe Duty,” in which you are towing or hauling really heavy loads with it and putting a lot of miles on the vehicle while doing so.
In that case, the transmission requires 13.1 quarts of MERCON LV low-viscosity synthetic transmission fluids for a transmission flush at 150,000 miles. For most 2015 Ford F-150 users, though, this will never be an issue.
Photos: Ford
