2012 Toyota FJ Cruiser Radiator TRQ RDA82738

Hey, friends, it's Lenny here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. It's going to be an easy job and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay. I'm going to remove both these skid plates using my 12 millimeter. You can use a ratchet, you can use an air gun, whatever you have access to, obviously. Air gun is a little bit quicker. There's four bolts, so I got three of them. I'm got to have one left here so that means the skid plate is going to be ready to come down. So I'm going to get ready to hold that as soon as I get this on. Here we are. Grab this skid plate, get that out of the way. We'll set it aside. So we'll do the forward skid plate now. There should be four bolts in this as well one here, one there. One should be there, it's imaginary. One there, also imaginary. On the front of this it has little hooks that go into the frame. Right here is one. And then the other one is right here. So what you would do is you would start with the forward ones, take those out. And then you work your way to these, okay? Once you remove these the skid plate can come down this way towards you, or towards the front, so you want to be careful for your face. But the hooks are going to make it so it can't completely fall straight down.

Okay. Bring it down and then slide it out towards the front of the vehicle. It should want to slide right out here. Just get this hook off of there. There it is. So here's the hooks I was talking about. And they just go right up inside here. Okay, now that we've removed the skid plate we can access the petcock which is right here. This is the drain for your cooling system. You want to, of course, make sure you drain it into a proper recycling receptacle so you can dispose of it properly. Wear your safety glasses and your hand protection. I'm just going to go ahead and turn that to the left, until fluid starts coming out. There we are. All right, we'll let that completely drain out and then we can continue with our service from the top.

Okay. Now that we've got that draining I'm just going to open up this radiator cap right here. We'll take a look at it. This one looks like it's original, it's been on there for awhile. I'm going to go ahead and replace this. I'll set this aside for now, though. So now I'm going to remove the cover right here. I'm going to use a 10 millimeter and set those aside. Lift this up, pull it towards you, it slides right off. We'll set this aside. Okay, next step, we're going to remove these little push clips. Something as simple as a small, pocket screwdriver will do that. What you do is you lift up the center part and that unlocks these ears. And then you can slide it up. We'll set that aside. Do the same for all these push clips. Here we are. All the push clips. Grab this out of the way and we'll set it aside.

All right, get this off of here. That gives us access to get to right here. I'm going to use a 10 millimeter. One bolt, set this aside. Grab this one. Bolt number two, same as number one. Set it aside. Now our last bolt, right over here. Continuing with our 10 millimeter. Number three, same as the other two. Can't mix those up. We'll grab our reservoir and we'll set this aside. We're just going to remove this hose. There we are. Set this aside. We're going to remove this clamp right here. Shake it around a little bit, get it to break free. These pliers are great except getting the exact right size for things sometimes can be a pain. Slide it down the hose. You're going to grab your hose. Give it a little wiggle if it doesn't seem like it wants to break free. This one almost kind of looks like it will. Yeah, it's coming off. Okay. We'll set that aside. You can check your hose, makes sure you don't see any dry rot cracks in there when you squeeze it. This hose still looks decent. Set it aside.

Okay, so what we're going to do now, we're going to try to remove these nuts right here. Okay? What I'm going to do first, though, is I'm just going to try to loosen them all up. Once I open them all up I'm going to remove the serpentine belt. These right here are 12 millimeter nuts. So you just take your wrench, while the belt is still on, set it on there and just give it a little shake to break it free. If you go slow it's just probably going to spin the pulley. So you've just got to really kind of jam onto it. Try to snap it free. Okay? Like I said, you don't want to fully remove these nuts. If you fully remove the nuts the pulley is going to be able to shift and it might throw the belt off. So keep that in mind. Okay, we've got all four of those loose. Now we're going to go ahead and remove the serpentine belt. We'll get that out of the way and we can continue.

Okay. So to get to the tensioner pulley, which is located directly to the driver's side of the water pump pulley, or the fan clutch pulley, you're just going to go right here with your 14 millimeter socket and lift up on it. That relieves tension on the belt. Take the belt off of whichever pulley you can easily reach, for me it was the power steering pump. And we'll get our tool out of here. Okay. So now we have no tension on this. We can go ahead and take out all four of these bolts, or nuts I mean. That's what they look like. We'll remove all these and we'll move on to the next step. Okay, get our last nut off of here. We'll set it aside with the other three. Now we can grab our assembly and pull it right off. Here we are. We'll set the fan aside. And there it is. Cool. Now we'll move on to the next step.

Okay. We'll just remove this right here. And that makes it so these hoses will come off of the fan shroud. There we are. Now those won't be holding us up. We're going to remove a 10 millimeter right here. That's what it looks like. We'll set this aside. Okay. We're going to remove the 10 millimeter on the other side of the engine, or the other side of the radiator. See if I can... Oh, there it is. Same as the first. I'll put both of those together, it'll be easier to remember how they go together. We can grab our fan shroud and our fan assembly. We're going to pull them both at the same time. Pull our fan assembly out. And here we are. Here's our fan assembly. Okay? Grab the shroud. We'll remove that, easy peasy. Okay. So we've got our hoses over here, right? One, two, and three. We're going to remove all three of these and then we can move onto the next step. So I'm going to set this down somewhere, maybe, I don't know. Just like that, so I can't see anything.

I'm going to grab this clamp, slide it down the hose. I'm just going to grab this hose, nice, easy twist. Inside here there's going to be fluid. So you're going to have fluid drain out. You want to make sure you have a collection receptacle under there. Just check your hose. This one looks like it's pretty decent. I'm going to set this aside, up high so hopefully it won't fall down and drain out all its fluid. We've got our next clamp right there. And do the same thing, see if I can get in here. All right, I'm going to grab some clamp pliers. That'll be much easier than using those. I've got my clamp pliers now. I'm going to grab right onto the ears, squeeze down. Slide that clamp up and away. There we are. Release pressure, hopefully. I'm just going to gently grab the hose, give it a nice twist. The hose is starting to come off. Fluid will come out of this. Like I said, make sure you have your collection receptacle under there. There we are. Okay, didn't get much fluid. Looks like it's getting ready to come out, but nothing too crazy. That's nice. Continue with my hose pliers. Try to bring my clamp up and away from the radiator. There we are. Okay. And just drain that into our receptacle. There we are. Clear to move onto the next step.

Okay. So now we're going to remove this grill assembly here. I'm just going to go ahead and lift up on the center there. Pull out that pushpin and set that aside. Come along, we've got a 10, 10, push clip. I'll lift the center, put that aside. 10 millimeter. 10 millimeter. Put both those bolts aside. You've got a little push clip in the center there. I'm just going to grab a little fork-y tool. Here we are. Okay. There's little push clips down along the headlight buckets. There's one right there and there's one on the other side. Sometimes they pull out fairly easily and you don't need to use this tool. But other times not so much. We'll just remove our grill assembly.

Okay so now, if you look inside the grill, deep down in there you have a bumper bracket. It's black? Inside that bumper bracket there's a slot. And, inside that slot, there's a spot for your 12 millimeter. You're going to put it on the bolt. And then you're going to come to the engine compartment side. I'm going to hold that extension with my 12 and I'm going to go right down in here. I'm going to remove this nut right here. I'm using a 13 millimeter on the inside, engine compartment side, and a 12 millimeter on the forward side. I'm just going to remove this. Okay. That's what our nut looks like on this side. Yeah, cool, so now we can get to the rubber bushing.

So we would do the same for the passenger side. But I'll show you where the upper portion is for this one. Right inside there there's a 12 millimeter bolt. So I'm going to go in with my 12, try to get it on there. And there we are. And come back up here with my 13. Remove this. There it is. And then, once again, same thing on the passenger side. Right up along the top and find my 12 millimeter. Okay. That nut is stuck on the bushing, but that's okay. I'll get that off in a second. We're going to grab our radiator. Slide it a little bit out. There we are. Bring this up. Now we've removed our radiator.

So here we are, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our original radiator our of our 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. Over here we have our brand new, quality, 1A Auto part. These are both the exact same. They have four mounting holes, right along the sides. This one still has its bushings in it. I'll take those out, I'll show you how. We've got our three hoses on the side over here, or areas for the hoses. Right? Right along the driver's side there. Petcock for draining. Upper radiator hose mount. And then, of course, we've got our hook-y doos for the fan shroud to slide down into and then the areas for the bolts. So, as you could tell, this is a quality part. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be great to install into the vehicle. So I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

All right, so we're going to go ahead and remove these bushings. The bottom side, just a little rubber thing. Just take that off. Next you'd want to grab this, push up with your finger, and slide it out. You're going to do the same for all four bushings, and then we'll install them into the new radiator. Okay, it's time to go ahead and put these in. To do that we're just going to take the big portion of your bushing, slide it through the radiator. Then take the other side and slide it right through. I'm going to do the same for this one.

Okay, so we've got our brand new, quality. 1A Auto radiator. I'm going to bring it down nice and easy, being very careful for the fans. The last thing I want to do is damage any of my fans. That'll restrict airflow through the radiator. I'm just going to set this just like this. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to pay special attention to the fact that, when I bring the radiator in, I could push these bolts all the way through in which case they'll fall out and it might be hard to get them back in. So we just need to take our time on this, all right? I'm going to grab my socket and my extension and I'm going to do these one at a time. I'm going to start with the the lower one on the driver's side. I'm just going to come in through the grill with my 12 millimeter again. I'm going to see if I can get it on there. Come on, baby. Okay. It's definitely on there. I'm just going to take it and put it up inside the bushing. Slide it in. And there we are.

Okay. I'm going to leave that one just like it is. Let's see. And let me see it. Yeah. I'm just going to grab one of my nuts. Just start it on the teensiest bit, a couple threads. Just enough so it won't fall off and I won't loose my bolt. There we are. Get my socket extension out. I'm going to do the same for the passenger side. Okay, now I'm just doing the top. I'm just kind of starting them all just the teensiest bit. I don't want to go ahead and push any of these bolts out. Okay, they're all started at this point. Now I can go ahead and tighten these down. It feels like it bottomed out a teeny bit more. There we are. I'm going to do the same thing for the other three. All right, that bottomed out a little bit. Here we are. All four are nice and tight. Perfect.

Okay, try to wiggle the radiator, it doesn't move anywhere. We can start taking some of these caps off at this point. They just pull right off, easy peasy. That's just for shipping, keeps the debris and dust and all that out of there. A little hard to do with gloves on. Got all my little covers off, just got rubber covers on these. I'm going to save those rubber covers so I can put them on the old radiator. And, of course, the plastic ones. Once I finish draining it I'll just make sure I put these covers on the old radiator. Just in case there happens to be a little bit of extra fluid in there somehow. But, of course, I want to make sure that I drain and recycle any fluid that I can the best I can. All right, let's move along to the next step.

Okay, it's time to grab that lower radiator hose right here. We're going to slide it onto the radiator, in as far as it can go. There we are. Now I'm going to grab my clamp with my clamp pliers. Squeeze down on it. I'm going to bring it back to its original starting point, or where I removed it from the hose. I'm going to try to line it up exactly where I took it off. That looks pretty good. Give it a nice little tug, it's not going anywhere. We can move along to the next hose. I'm just going to slide this right on here. Just like that, easy peasy. Do the same thing. Okay. I'm just going to see where I had this one, right there. Give it a tug. Feels good. There we are. Slide this on there. The hardest part is just getting it back where you took it from. And it's easy to just be like, "Eh, it's fine like that." But it's super important to try to get it back where it came from. And there we are. Nice tug, tug. Tight, tight, tight. Going all the way down, these are all going to be held by the fan shroud, the little clip we took off the fan shroud. We're all set to move onto the next step.

Okay, it's time to get the grill back on here. So you want to get everything lined up. You've got your push clips right here, two, three. They're going to go right into here, here, and there. These right here are going to slide in. And then, of course, those go in right there. It's all pretty self-explanatory. Once you get it lined up it's going to line up where it needs to go. Just like that. I've got my pushpins all lined up with their holes. Yeah? Okay, time for a loving bonk. Bonk. Bonk, bonk. And there we are, that's my thing to get that on there. We're going to grab these 10 millimeters. Push clips, just lift up the center so it's not pushing out. Slide it in, push in the center. Lift up the center, slide it in, push in the center. We're going to tighten up those 10s. I'm going to screw these in with our 10 millimeter. Okay, give it a little shake. Make sure it's in. Oh, yeah. Let's move to the next step.

Okay. It's time to install our cooling shroud and fan. I'm just going to get the shroud so it's down in there waiting for me. I'll get my fan lined up. Let's see, I'm going to try to pull it away so you can hopefully see a little bit. Get that down in there. There we are. Okay. I've got four of these nuts right up here. So I'm just going to... I'll get them started on. We'll tighten them down in a minute. There's one. I'm going to use my ratchet with my 14 millimeter. I'm going to maneuver the tensioner so it releases tension on the belt. Gives me more slack, essentially. And I can put my belt over all my pulleys. Okay. I'm just going to get my ratchet out of here. Before I go any further I'm just going to double-check to make sure the belt is on all my pulleys. Beautiful. Okay. Keep going with my double-checking here. All right. At this point, without starting up the vehicle, it looks as though I'm on all my pulleys. We'll double-check it again after we have a chance to start the vehicle. We can move ahead to the next step.

Okay. Using our same 14 millimeter socket and ratchet that we were using, we're going to go back on the tensioner. We're going to apply opposite pressure. I'm pushing down at this point, that's applying pressure to the belt. And it's going to prevent this pulley from spinning while I tighten up these nuts. Nice and tight. All right, that's nice and tight. Get this one nice and tight. There we are. All four are nice and tight. We can move along to the next step.

Okay, it's time to get this lined up at the bottom. Right down here you have a little hook-y doo that comes off the radiator. It comes like this. And then the shroud slides down in it, like that. Okay? So you need to try to get the bottom pressed up against the radiator and then slide it down into its little groove down there. Once it seems like it's in you can just go ahead and give it a little bonk. Just like that, a little loving bonk makes the world go around. Go over here. And here we are. Okay. Inside with the radiator you've got these little square nuts here. They just go right inside these slots. I'm going to go right up in the top just like that. It slides right in the side. And that just makes it so the bolt has something to go into. I'll do the same on the other side. Okay?

Got one of our bolts started in there. I'm going to leave it loose for this second, until I start this one. And there we are. Once it feels like it bottoms out, like that, I'm just going to give it a teeny bit more. Give it a wiggle, feels good. Do the same thing over here. You don't want to apply too much pressure on these, because the... Well, the radiator is plastic, right? Okay, bottomed out. A little more. Give her a nice wiggle. If the bottom doesn't separate from the radiator that means we did a good job getting the fan shroud into the little hook-y doos down there. On this side over here we have that little clamp or clip that held the hoses. So I'm just going to go like that. See if I can get it to plug in there. There we are. That just makes it so they can't wobble around, go too far, cause an issue. Let's move along to the next step.

Okay. So we've got our little push clips here. You just want to take it, while they're open or the center is lifted out, push in the outer ring and then push in the center. Okay? You can start from the center, you can start from one side. You do you, boo boo. I'm going to put that one there, I'll find it later. Grab that. See if I can push through the center. Some of these are in pretty poor condition, maybe I'll get some and replace those. You can watch the video on that. There we are. Those are all in, we can move ahead to the next step.

Okay. I'm going to grab this clamp with my pliers, hopefully. There we are. Slide the hose over the radiator. Try to get my pliers on there, there we go. Bring this over. Give it a nice little tug. It's going nowhere. We can move ahead to the next step.

So here we go. We're going to install our coolant reservoir. Just line up the holes. We've got our three bolts. I'm going to start them all in before I go ahead and tighten any of them down. There we are. We'll tighten these down. Okay. Start with the hardest one to get to, because why not? Feels like it's getting close. Okay, bottomed, teeny bit. There we go. I'm just going to grab the other two. Bottomed. And there it is, let's move to the next step.

Time to install this. This hose lines up with this, slides right on there. This is going to close right up. Of course we're going to fill it first. But, just to show you, this clips on there. Easy peasy.

Okay, it's time to install our engine cover. We've got two little hook-y doos like this. One is going to go here, one is going to go there. This is going to set flat down. And then we've got a little piton there, one there, going to go in there. Line them up. Bring it down. Line up the studs with the holes. We've got two nuts. Tight. Tight. Looking good.

Okay, it's time to get this skid plate back up. We've got a little hook right there. That's going to go right in this hole right here, okay? What that's going to do is make it so, if you had to, you could let go. Right? And/or you can hold towards the front and you don't have to worry about holding up the whole weight of the skid plate. So I'm just going to take my bolts for the forward end of it. Get it started in the hole there. I'm not going to tighten it down until I get all four started. All right. Nice and easy here. That's coming around. See if I can see up there. And this one. Perfect, let's move ahead.

All right, so we've got our forward skid plate, we've got our little hooks on the skid plate. They go right up inside the slots, okay? You've got two hooks, you've got two slots. So just bring it so it's straight up and down. Line the hooks up with the slots. Now at this point you can release the front, assuming you have both hooks there. And you can move along to the back, where we can get this in and situated. All right. It should be wanting to go up in there. There we go, that one's started. There we go. I'm just going to blast them up in there. Theoretically most of these skid plates have four, right? It'll have two up here, too. So if you had those two up there you're going to make sure you start those before you tighten these. There we go, tight. Tight. Very nice.

Okay, friends. So I just wanted to show you this real quick. Something you can buy right at 1AAuto.com. It's a little spill-proof funnel. Okay? This is really great, because it's got pretty much every accessory that you might need inside of it. It doesn't matter what kind of vehicle you're working on. More than likely we have an adapter for it right in there. So, for the Toyotas it's green. Right there. We're going to grab the small cap. It goes right on like this. Okay? And then, of course, we've got all these adapters like I said. So, if you ended up needing any of those for a different type of vehicle, you can of course use something like that. We've got our funnel. You're going to want to make sure you have access to this. This is a little plunger, or a plugger. Okay? So now what we'd want to do, we're just going to put some coolant in this. This is universal coolant, it's not green coolant just so you know. It looks a little green, but it's not. Open up our little plunger here. It's going to burp out any air that's in there. We're going to add a little bit more as soon as this is done here.

All right, so now we're going to get all of our extra pieces out of the way here. Take this, just kind of set it... Well, whatever. Wherever you want to put it, really, so it's not going to fall. Now we're going to start up the vehicle, let it run for a few minutes. It's going to help burp out any air that's in there. And, as the air comes up, the coolant is going to continue down. Once that's done running for a little while we're going to make sure that the cooling fans turn on. Once those turn on it should be fully burped out. And, at that point, we'll be able to move ahead to the next step.

Okay, so this has been running for awhile now. We turned it off, let it sit for a minute. Now I'm just going to grab the hose, it's going to be a little warm. I'm going to make it quick. There we are. I pushed the plunger down in. That's going to make it so I can lift up on this funnel. And I'm just going to put the excess right inside this overflow. After we put that in the overflow we'll top off the overflow to where it needs to be. And then we should be all set to move along. There's that. I'm going to grab a little bit more coolant for in there before we do that, it's warm. Get this off of here. There we are. All right, I'm just going to grab some more coolant to top this off and we'll be all set to move ahead. All right, get this up to our level there. There we are, just below the full line. I like to have it right in-between the full and the low. And that way there when the coolant expands or contracts it has space to go. So there we are. We'll just grab our radiator cap. Put this back in here. Nice

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