How to Install Hood Support Pistons 2002-09 Toyota 4Runner

Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on our 2006 Toyota 4Runner and I want to show you how to remove and install a hood prop rod. If you need this or any of the part, check us out. 1aauto.com. Thanks.

So one of the first things you want to do is make sure that your Hood's going to be secure. Last thing you want is for this hood to come down, potentially hit you in the head, crush your hands, hurt you in any way. 1A Auto number one preference is to make sure that you're safe at all times. I'm just going to go like this and take this prop rod. It's extendable. Just going to put it up just like that. That puts plenty of pressure like this. The hood can't really go very far, to get it to stay, awesome.

Come right over here. This is where your prop rod is, or piston. All right. You'll notice that there's kind of like a nut right here. When you take this, you can turn it all the way to the left. It's going to take out this whole unit. It's going to look something like this. All right. It's got a little washer on it. We'll get to that in a minute though. To get started, we're going to use our wrench, 12 millimeter go like this. Just try and get it to break free. It's super important to make sure that you use that prop rod. Just to reiterate because once you get this off of here, what's going to be holding it up? Just the one other piston there. Is that going to be strong enough? I don't know. I don't want to be the one that you know have you under here like this, trying to do this. God forbid anything bad happens, just going to keep going. Hold the hood up. Here we go. That comes down like that. The hood's nice and safe for us.

Getting these wrenches out of here for now. You use my 12 millimeter down here as well. Once it's loose should be all set to get it by hand. Here's our original prop piston. So here we are friends, a quick product comparison. Right here we have our original hood piston. This holds up the hood in our 2006 Toyota 4Runner. Over here we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. As you can tell if you hold these up next to each other, they have the same exact length, which is very important. You don't want one that's longer than the other. We don't want the hood going up too far or sitting down too low.

This piston right here is going to be way too strong for me to go ahead and push down by my own hands, but with the leverage of having the hood on there, it's going to work very well. It comes with the kit that we need to install. This is going to go right in here after you mount into the body and the hood of the vehicle. With that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I want to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, check us out. 1aauto.com. Thanks

All so we're going to get one of our pieces here. We're going to take one of the washers that came with it. Put it right on there. If you want to use a little thread locker, you can. If you do, just use a little dab. We'll say it's your prerogative. Do you need some? I would say no, but you do you boo-boo. Just going to take it, start in right here. Get it going in. Now I'm going to use my 13 millimeter. Just tighten this up. Make sure it's nice and tight, bonk, bonk, bonk. That's good. And do the same thing for this one. Put it in right here. You want to be careful? The wrench doesn't slide off and you hurt your face, bonk, bonk, bonk. There we go. That's on there. Here we go.

So when you install this, you want to make sure you would do it the right way. It doesn't go this way, all right. So the skinny end of the piston goes down in, it actually goes this way. So you've got the big part and the piston goes up and inside. That's going to help make sure that debris doesn't get stuck in here. And mess up the piston seal and cause issues down the line. You can start with the top or the bottom whenever you want to do. Let me go with the bottom. Just press it in. Just like that. Give it a nice tug. It doesn't want to come out. We're going to do the same thing for the top. Just push the hood up or down, whichever way you need to go to get it to line up. That's in there good. Let's grab our tools out of the way. Prop rod, let's give it a try. Oh yeah, that's nice. Ready? Bring it almost all the way down. You can't ask for any better than that. Thanks 1A.

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