CarScan
Green or blue — information only

Low washer fluid

The washer bottle is low. The lamp informs rather than warns, but in winter it matters more than it seems: a dirty windscreen is more dangerous than many faults.

These lamps are not about a fault: they say a system is switched on, or remind you of something simple to do.

What to do now

  1. Top it up. In winter use only a freeze-resistant fluid: summer fluid bursts the bottle and the pump in frost.
  2. If the lamp is on with a full bottle, it is almost always the level sensor float or its connector.
  3. If the fluid disappears quickly for no visible reason, look for a cracked bottle or a hose that has come off.
  4. Thaw a frozen bottle in the warm — not with an open flame or boiling water. And do not run the washer until the ice is gone: the pump burns out in seconds against it.
  5. In summer plain water is enough, but it goes green and blocks the jets. In winter a mixture diluted by eye freezes and splits the bottle from inside.

What to read next

A lamp is not a diagnosis. The same symbol lights up for a dozen different reasons, and only the code stored in the car tells them apart.

How the app helps

CarScan reads the codes behind the lamp through an OBD-II adapter, explains them in plain words and puts them into a report you can show to a mechanic.

See what the app does