How to Change Oil 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

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

Okay, friends. So we've got our hood up. We can see everything. We have our oil cap here, tells us what type of oil you use. You want to use 5W-30 oil in this. Super important. Down here, you have your oil filter. They make it nice and easy for us to access. We'll use a filter wrench for that in a minute.

When you're doing an oil change, it's always a good habit to at least take a peak at your fluids. If something's low, you can go ahead and make sure that you check it and make sure that you fill it, get it up to the spec where it should be at. So over here is where your brake fluid is. If you notice that your brake fluid's low, you just check right on the cap. This one says it's DOT 3, so you would add a little bit of DOT 3, get it up to the maximum line. You can move along. You've got your coolant reservoir over here. If this looks like it's low, pop it, fill it to the maximum line. Your air filter's located right here. You've got a couple of little clips. You've got your oil dipstick over here. Okay? That's how you check your oil level. Power steering fluid and your washer fluid reservoir. If any of these fluids are low, couldn't hurt to get them up to spec.

So to move along and continue with our oil change, which is what the video is about today, we're going to remove the oil cap first. When you take this off, a good habit is to put it right over here. That way there, if something happens and you get distracted and you go to close your hood, your hood won't be able to close. You're gonna realize something's wrong. You didn't put on the oil cap. Did you add oil? I don't know. I got distracted. It's still here. That means we didn't add oil. The hood can't close. We can't go driving down the road and make a detrimental mistake.

Right here is our oil filter, as I stated, I'm going to use my filter wrench or if you're strong enough, you could do it by hand. Good for you. This one's on there nice and tight from the last person, which I think it might be a little over-tightened personally. They don't have to be super, super tight. Okay. When you open this up, oil's going to drain out. It's going to come through this hole in the bottom there. Okay? So you want to put like little catch under there. So I'm going to catch oil that's going to come through. I'm just going to grab a little cup or a cap of some sort. I'm going to put it on there and then we'll continue.

We've got our oil bucket under there. That's going to collect any waste oil. We definitely don't want to pollute the earth. Let that go right down there. Take this right out of here. Here's our old oil filter. We'll make sure that we drain this and dispose of it properly.

Now we're going to take our oil filter. Generally speaking, I like to fill the oil filters, but where this is upside down, I'm definitely not going to fill it. I'm just going to put some up in this upper ring up here and that's just so I can use my gloved finger, coat the top of my oil filter. If you're not wearing gloves, obviously, you don't want to be putting your fingers inside the oil. It is a chemical and your skin's an organ and it will absorb it.

Okay. So we've got that sitting there. That's ready to be put on. It's prepped. Now, we're going to take a rag, we're going to clean up this area. Start around the top, work my way around because the bottom's obviously the dirtiest area. Just try to get out as much of that as we can. Make this as clean as possible along where the seal's gonna ride our gasket. Okay.

Take our oil filter, put it right up on here. There we are. Got it bottomed out. Just going to dry it off a little bit here. Okay. Basically, I have it bottomed out right now. At this point, to tighten it down I'm just going to use my band wrench again. It's going to go like that and then like that and that's it. You don't need to keep going and going and going until the metal part of the filter's hitting up against the base. That's entirely too tight. Just tighten it up as much as you can by hand. Give it a couple of cracks, right? It's bottomed out. Give it a little bit extra and then grab it with your wrench and just the teensy bit. Okay? You only need to go like plus three-quarters of a turn once it's touching.

We'll get all this out of the way. Now, we can get under the vehicle. Right under here, this is our drain plug. It's on the very small oil pan. The FJs have the smallest oil pan that I've ever seen. I'm going to take a 14 millimeter socket and my ratchet. Of course, I have my safety glasses on hand protection, super important, and our collection bucket. We're going to get ready to drop this down. When it comes down, there's a chance that it could come splashing up, so make sure you have your mouth closed and your eyes protected. Here we are. We're going to let that do its thing. When it's finished draining, we'll be able to continue.

Okay. So just a note, your vehicle may have some skid plates under here, right from the front to here and then from here over to here. The access hole to get to your drain plug should be right about here in your rearward skid plate or a protection plate, whatever you've got. Okay? This one doesn't have them on it.

While you're under here, if you wanted to, you could check your fluids. This one would be easier without the skid plate on there. This is where you check your front differential fluid, and if you wanted to drain it, there's a drain there. Okay. Obviously, you want to make sure that the fill plug comes out before you go ahead and pull out a drain. I mean that only makes sense. But anyway. You've got that up there for your fill on the front diff. You could check your transfer case fluid with this right here. This is your check plug or fill plug for your transfer case. That's the drain, 24 millimeter. And then back here at the rear differential, you've got your fill plug right here or check plug, and then of course, the drain right here. Okay. If you want to see a video on how to service any of these fluids, of course, you can check it out.

These FJs on the driveshafts, they have a lot of grease fittings. There's one on each U-joint. This one has a grease fitting. It's up top, but you know, if you have the vehicle in neutral and the wheels are off the ground, you can spin this. This is not in neutral, so I can't. So there would be one back there at the rearward U-join. Follow this up. This area right here should be lubricated. To lubricate it, up along this part of the yoke, except up on the top, there's another grease fitting. Okay? Pretty much right where my finger is. All right.

And then right inside here for this U-joint, there's another grease fitting. So there's three, right, three so far. And you got your front driveshaft. This one has a grease fitting as well. Let's see. It's right inside there. They're really hard to get to. You could take off these two 10 millimeter bolts right here or 12 millimeter bolts. Sorry. Take these off right here and get this shield out of the way if it makes it easier or you could just turn it in this direction and put your grease gun through. There's also another grease fitting right here. Okay? So there's one in between there, then there's one right on my finger, and then there's one all the way up in the far forward, right here. Okay?

So you've got three for each drive shaft and then of course, some front end stuff. When you replace parts, sometimes front end things have grease fittings as well, so you'd want to grease those as well. Okay?

So we've got our drain plug. We cleaned it off. I replaced the gasket. If you have access to a new gasket, it's always a good idea. Just wipe off the pan around where the gasket's going to ride. There we are. Okay. It's bottomed out. We're gonna torque this down to 30 foot-pounds with our 14 millimeter socket. There we are. Just check it one more time. Good to go.

Okay. So we've got our funnel in there. Now, we're going to add five and a half quarts of 5-30 oil. Okay. That's our last bit. I started with the half quart, then I finished up with the other five. Move our funnel. Wipe up any mess. Oil cap. So it's on there straight. Snug. Perfect. All right.

Okay. So to check the oil, we've got our dipstick right here, says engine oil on it. Rag. Just going to bring it up. Wipe it off. This is the preliminary check of the oil. It's going to be a different level once we start it up. It's sitting all the way up here. Okay? That's because the oil is sitting in the bottom of the engine or the oil pan right now. Once I start it up, the oil is going to go up, lubricate everything it needs to lube, hang out up there for a little while, do its thing. So I'm going to leave that like that. The dipstick's all the way down. Now, I'm going to jump inside the vehicle, start it up for a second, let it run for maybe 15 seconds. Turn it back off, make sure I'm on a level surface, and then I'm going to recheck the oil level. It should be between the lower level and the upper level. Anywhere in between the low mark and the max mark is fine.

Okay. I'm inside the vehicle. I'm going to go ahead and start it up. I'm just going to let this run for a couple seconds. Now, we're going to go ahead and lift up on the dipstick, wipe it off immediately. Put it back inside the dipstick tube, give it one second, pull it back up. Now, we're going to take a peek. Down here is the lower level. You can see the little dot. All the way up here is the upper level. You can also see that dot, also. The oil level is right in between. It looks good. If you were unsure, just wipe it off and go ahead and do it again. That one looked good. I'm not worried about it. We'll put that down in there. Make sure everything's nice and tight. Just give it a quick double check. Here we are. Off we go. Easy peasy.

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