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How to Remove Ambient Air Temp Sensor 1997-2005 Lexus GS300

Created on: 2019-05-10

Learn how to replace the broken, missing, or failing ambient air temperature sensor on your 97-05 Lexus GS300 in this video brought to you by 1AAuto.com

  1. step 1 :Removing the Bumper
    • Remove the ten 10 mm screws along the bottom front edge of the bumper
    • Pull away the splash shielding at the corner
    • Disconnect the fog light electrical connector, or remove the bulb assembly
    • Disconnect the side marker bulb electrical connector, or remove the bulb assembly
    • Repeat on the other side
    • Remove the 10 mm screw at the corner of the bumper securing it to the fender
    • Repeat on the other side
    • Remove the four 10 mm screws along the top edge of the bumper
    • Pull the bumper free
  2. step 2 :Removing the Ambient Air Temperature Sensor
    • Disconnect the ambient air temperature sensor electrical connector
    • Pry the ambient air temperature sensor away from the frame with a plastic fastener removal tool
  3. step 3 :Installing the Ambient Air Temperature Sensor
    • Reconnect the ambient air temperature sensor electrical connector
    • Press the ambient air temperature retaining clip back into the frame
  4. step 4 :Replacing the Bumper
    • Rest the bumper lightly in place
    • Replace the four 10 mm bolts along the top edge of the bumper
    • Replace the 10 mm screw at the corner of the bumper where it mounts to the fender
    • Repeat for the other side
    • Reconnect or replace the fog light and side marker light bulbs
    • Repeat for the other side
    • Seat the plastic under body shield back in place
    • Replace the ten 10 mm screws along the bottom front edge of the bumper

Tools needed

  • Socket Extensions

    Plastic Fastener Remover

    10mm Socket

    Ratchet

Hey, everyone, it's Len from 1A Auto. Today, I'm going to be showing you how to remove and replace an air temp sensor on a 2001 Lexus GS 300. If you need any parts for your vehicle, you can always come down to 1AAuto.com.

We're going to start removing the 10 bolts that are under here, they're 10mm. A couple of them are missing, so we'll just skip onto the next, got them right here. Very simple. This is what it's going to look like, should be 10 of them under here. We'll just go all the way around. Here's the last one. All right. Put those all safely so we won't loose any more. Now we can pull this down. As you can see, it comes down quite a bit, which is perfect. Watch your eyes for any falling debris. I'm going to pull this down a little bit out of the way. Behind here you'll notice there's a fog light, so that means there must be a wiring harness that leads to it. We'll take a look up in there. I don't know if you can see it with the camera or if I can see it without the camera.

If you can't get the wiring harness off, you can also just try to remove the whole bulb assembly from the unit itself. Here we go. Remove that being careful not to mess up the filament or the bulb. You don't need to touch any of this glass. Any type of oils or anything could become an issue. It's going to decrease the life of your bulb. On the inside up here, we have a marker light on the side, so that means that inside there's going to be another little harness. Can either disconnect the harness or just remove the whole unit from the assembly itself, and then we're going to go over to the other side and do the same exact thing.

All right. So now that we've got those 10 out, we've got the bulbs and everything disconnected, I wanted to show you up inside here. Right there, there's another 10mm head screw. We're going to use our 10mm socket, put it on there. If you have an extension, that would be great. Turn it to the left. Then I'll remove that pulley. Then we're going to work our way over to the other side and do the exact same operation. As you can see, it's the same as the other 10 that we removed, so you don't have to keep it separate. It'll match up with all the rest of them.

Continue with a 10mm socket. We're going to continue to remove these four screws, one, two, three, four, starting on one side and working your way over. All right, last one. There we go. All right. Here we go. We're going to give this a yank, being careful because it's only plastic. Sticky. I'm going to come around to the other side, see if I can break this free and maybe it'll help get that side free. Here we go. Seems to be whatever is going on is going on just in this corner. I'm going to come around. There's nothing there. There we go. Now we're going to put this bumper assembly aside, just a plastic cover. We'll put it some place so hopefully it won't get too scratched up.

All right. Now what we're going to be doing is removing this ambient air temp sensor and it's very simple. You may or may not have to remove the outer bumper shell. For the purposes of this video and your vision, we want to be able to make sure you can see it right. I'm going to show you how to do it with the bumper cover off.

You squeeze a little tab that's located right under here, gripping onto both sides, both hands. Just give it a little tug. Always check your electrical connectors. It's very important. This doesn't look green, doesn't look rusted. Should be good to go. Next, what we're going to do is we're going to use a little tool, something like this. You could probably use a pry bar or whatever you might have laying around in your garage or junk drawer at home. You squeeze it right under here and you can remove your unit just like that.

All right. Whether you have your old part or even a better quality new part, you can go ahead and place this back into the connector. So we're going to line up the two pieces. Should be very simple. You hear the clip. Now we're going to look under here. You're going to see where this presses into, there's a single hole, and that's it.

All right. Now were going to go ahead and start putting this bumper cover back on being careful not to scratch our lenses with any plastic. Just try to come up and over. We're going to just set it on there just like that. Hold it with your leg if you can. Just try to get everything kind of set up so it's pretty close. Then we're going to go ahead and grab our bolts. That's a good one. That looks good. I'm going to grab my bolts and we'll move onto the next step.

All right. So taking some of our fine-pitch bolts right here with a 10mm head, we're going to go ahead and line up our holes. You can see it lines up pretty well. Put it in there, try to get it a little bit started. See and you give it a little push just to give it a little coercion. Should start screwing right in. It feels good. Just get it started. We're going to want to line up the rest of the holes. Off of there, move on to our next hole, once again lining up the hole. Start it in. All right. Those are coming along good. Now we're just going to move along to the other side doing the same exact thing. Now that I tightened up the other two, I'm going to go ahead and start tightening all of them down. That feels good. We're just screwing into plastic here, so you don't have to tighten it down too much. Feels good and we're going to move along to the other side and do the exact same thing.

All right. Now we're going to start the hidden bumper bolt in. See if I can get it lined up with the hole, going to turn it to the right, should screw right in. All right, leaving it fairly loose so in case we have to maneuver the bumper at all. We'll just have to remember that we need to go back in and tighten that puppy up. Next I'm going to go over the other side, do the exact same thing. All right. Now that we have the upper part of the plastic bumper mounted in, we're going to go ahead and reinstall the bulbs that we had removed, one for the fog light and one for the marker light on the side of the bumper there.

So we're going to take it and come from behind, always with safety glasses so nothing falls in your eyes. I should bring it back down. I'm going to show you there's three prongs. There's going to be three holes inside the fog light assembly, so we're going to try to line those up. If you can't get it right off the bat, that's fine. Just keep spinning it. At some point, it will line up. There we go. There's one. Next, we're going to grab the marker light assembly. We're going to stick it up in there and do the same exact thing. We're going to try and line up those holes, latches right in. Now we've got that done, we're going to move on over to the other side of the vehicle and finish up those bulbs. We'll make sure they work and then we'll go ahead and mount up this undercarriage shield.

All right. So now it's time to start installing the bolts that we have for the bottom side of this shielding system. What you're going to notice is that it has a little clip on this one and should have one here. It doesn't, but we'll just go with what we've got. We're going to slide this piece into that clip right there. If there was one here, we would put it there, but since it doesn't have it, we'll just put it above the plastic part of the fender of the bumper cover. We're going to slide it in, clips in, and then we're going to take our 10mm head bolt. We're just going to start it in there and we're going to go all the way along the whole lower area of this, and we're going to put in our bolts everywhere that we took one out. Get that started. All right. Good to go.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1AAuto.com, your place for DIY auto repairs, for great parts, great service and more content.


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