# Which Oil Does Your Sterndrive Take? **By Sawley's Auto and Marine** · 2026-09-11 Ask what oil goes in a sterndrive and you will get three confident answers from three people, and at least one of them will be wrong for your drive. Volvo Penta has built sterndrives for sixty years, the lubrication requirement has changed several times along the way, and the drives that look most alike from the outside are the ones most often filled with the wrong oil. ## Which oil does a Volvo Penta sterndrive take? For the majority of drives in service today — the SX, DP-S, DPS-A and DPS-B, the DPI and the DPH — the specification is a **synthetic API GL-5 SAE 75W-90 gear oil**. That is the oil the drive was designed and tested around, and it is what we put in every one of them at Kadina. The genuine Volvo Penta drive oil in the [1 litre](/products/22479650-75w90-drive-oil-1l-genuine-volvo-penta) and 5 litre packs is that specification. The exceptions are where people go wrong. - **DP-G drives** call for a heavier 75W-140, which Volvo supplies as [22574246](/products/22574246-transmission-oil-genuine-volvo-penta). Put 75W-90 in a DP-G and it will run, but it will not be running on the film thickness the gears were designed for. - **DPH drives built to the 1.59:1 ratio** are listed in Volvo's parts data for that same 75W-140. The other DPH ratios take 75W-90. This is the one that catches even experienced owners, because the drive is identical to look at — check the ratio before you fill. - **The old AQ-series drives** — the 270, 280 and their relatives from the seventies and eighties — were specified in their day to run on the same oil as the engine. A lot of those drives have since been converted to gear oil by workshops, and a lot have not. If you own one and do not know its history, ring before you fill it, because the two oils are not interchangeable in the same drive. ### Find your drive before you find your oil All of the above assumes you know which drive you have, and a surprising number of owners do not, because the model is stamped on a plate that is under water most of the time and painted over the rest of it. Our [sterndrive identification chart](/pages/volvo-penta-sterndrive-identification-chart) lists every Volvo Penta drive from the original AQ range through to the current forward-facing FWD, with the identifying features, the serial ranges, the oil each takes and its capacity. Five minutes with the drive out of the water and that chart will settle it. ### Checking the level, and what the colour means The newer drives have a dipstick or a remote oil reservoir in the engine bay, and the level should be checked before every trip in the same breath as the engine oil. The older ones are checked at the drive itself with the leg down. Either way, the level matters less than the colour. Drive oil should be clear and honey to brown. **Milky, grey or creamy oil is water in the drive**, and it means a seal has failed: usually the propeller shaft seal, cut through by fishing line, or the seal behind the gimbal bearing. The logic is exactly the same as for an outboard gearbox, and our guide to [reading and changing gearbox oil](/blogs/guides/outboard-gearbox-oil-checking-for-water) walks through it. On a sterndrive there is one extra suspect: the **bellows**. A split in the drive bellows floods the U-joint cavity, and the water that gets in there finds its way past the gimbal seal in short order. If the oil is milky and the bellows have not been checked in a while, start there — the reasons are in our guide to [sterndrive bellows](/blogs/guides/sterndrive-bellows-when-to-replace). ### How often to change it Volvo's schedule is annually or every hundred hours, and our advice is to do it at the end of the season rather than the start. Drain it in autumn and you see the milky oil with the whole winter ahead of you to fix the seal; drain it in spring and you see it the week you wanted to go fishing. The drive is drained from the bottom plug, filled to the level mark, and the sealing washers replaced. The magnetic drain plug is worth a look every time: a light grey fuzz is normal, anything you can feel between your fingers is a bearing or a gear giving up. ### Parts and the workshop Drive oil, seals, bellows kits, gimbal bearings and the rest of the service parts for each drive family are grouped on our [Volvo Penta drive and sterndrive service parts](/pages/volvo-penta-drive-service-parts) page. As South Australia's authorised Volvo Penta dealer we carry the factory parts data for every drive on that chart, including the ones long out of production. If the oil has come out milky, or you simply are not sure which drive is bolted to the back of your boat, ring [0412 532 984](tel:+61412532984) and we will sort it out against the serial. **Tags:** Guides, Servicing, Volvo Penta --- > Source: [Sawley's Auto and Marine](https://www.sawleysautoandmarine.com.au/blogs/guides/which-oil-does-your-sterndrive-take)