Created on: 2019-05-16
Watch this video to learn how to remove or replace the horns on your 06-12 Nissan Altima. If yours doesn't work, or sounds odd, try out this 1A Auto guide!
13mm Socket
Socket Extensions
Flat Blade Screwdriver
Rust Penetrant
Plastic Fastener Remover
10mm Socket
Ratchet
Hey, friends. It's Len from 1A Auto. Today, we're going to be removing and replacing a horn assembly for a 2010 Nissan Altima. It's going to be a very simple job and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts for your vehicle, you can always come down to 1AAuto.com.
All right, so we're going to start removing this bumper cover. It's going to be very simple. I'm going to guide you through it. We're going to start at the top since we're already still on the ground. We're going to remove a couple of these pins right here, here, here, here, here, and here and then we'll continue onto the next steps. You'll need a couple basic tools. You might need all or any of these tools. So here we go. We'll start with the little fork-y looking one. Stick it under here. Pry it up. We'll put it someplace safe where we won't lose it. Continue on along the line. Sometimes, these might break. It happens. You can replace it if you want. We'll find that later. Move along here. I'm just going to pry up on this a little bit and I can use my fork again. I'm just going to pop it up. These right here are called push clips. So what happens is the center pulls up and it disengages the lock.
When you go to put this back in, you push the bottom part in first, plug the hole, then you shove this in and it spreads this and locks it in. Put that aside so we don't lose it. We're going to continue down the line. Just get it started. Use our little fork device here. Lift up on that pushpin. We're going to continue along. See if we can get under it and onto the next. Just give it a little tug to make sure that we got them all out. It's possible to miss one. It happens. It's human nature to make mistakes. I think we're good to move onto the next step, which will be raising the vehicle up a little bit so we can get a look at what's underneath and see what else is holding it on. So one thing that I did want to mention, even though we just finished taking all these out, we'll just put one more in real quick. We'll leave it in there until we've got everything else unattached. So when we're underneath the vehicle, we don't have to worry about it coming down and hurting us.
So I like to take note that there is a mounting bolt for the bumper cover right under here. It's a simple 10 millimeter head. You can use this ratchet and socket if you want or a ratchet wrench, whatever you're into, 10 millimeter. We can go ahead and turn that counterclockwise to reverse it out. Once we get this completely out, we'll go over to the other side of the vehicle and remove that one the same way. Here's what it looks like. We'll put that safely aside so we don't lose it and off we go. Next, we're going to go ahead and remove our 7 millimeter head bolts right here. They come across and they'll come across here if the rest of the splash shield was here. So you can use a ratchet or if you happen to have a little electric gun, that would work as well. Once we get all these off, we can go ahead and remove the push clips, get this right out of the way. Then we can get going on removing the rest of this bumper.
Put a little downward force on it if you want, making sure you're wearing safety glasses in case anything comes falling down. There we are. Something fell down. Now we're clear to start removing these push clips, same as the top. Just pull out the top end of it and then the bottom should come out as well. We can use our screwdrivers that we were using before. You want to find the little divot. Just want to get it pried up a little bit so we can grab it with our other tool there. So we can continue with our little hook tool if we want or we can go ahead and use some cutters. You might find it easier to just grab onto it with some cutters and pull it out. Grab on. You don't need to squeeze too hard. We're not trying to cut it. Just break it free, making sure you hold the splash shield so it doesn't fall down and hit you in the face. We're going to do the same for the other one. Come over and grab it with our cutters, nice and light. Break it free. It separated. That's okay.
Just going to pull down. Now we're clear to put these back together and we'll set them aside so we don't lose them. Now we're going to take our Phillips head screwdriver or whatever you might have. But it's a Phillips head on this. We're going to reverse all these bolts out or screws. Just going to come right along here. We don't need to worry about those. But right here, right here, right here and then it should come free. And then we'll go back up top and we'll dislodge it and it should come right off. Last one. These remove. We're just going to give it a little shake. Okay. We don't want to take it completely off. All right. Now we're clear to get back up to the top. We'll take out that one last pin that I showed you leaving in and it should come right off. So we're back up top to our last pin that we pressed in there. We're going to do it just like we did before and break it free like that.
At this point, once we get this out, the bumper cover might come loose. So you want to make sure you have it secured. Just lift this up and out. We'll put it over here. Grab onto it. It should come free. Now we've successfully removed our bumper cover. Okay, friends, now that we're in here, we're going to go ahead and take out this 13 millimeter head bolt so we can use our 13 millimeter socket and ratchet if you have access to that. Remove that fully. Once it feels like it's getting towards the end, you can remove your ratchet. You should be able to do it by hand, hopefully. We can't. It's okay. It's easy with a ratchet, not so easy just by hand. Come on. Okay. Now if I can't get it now. There we are. Now we can remove this. You'll notice there's two wires. These are very simple. They're one wire systems. You can just pop it off. Pop the other one off and here we have our horn assembly.
All right, friends, so now assuming we're going to be replacing one horn and not the pair, we're going to go ahead and show you how to take these off. It's going to be very simple. You'll see that this side shows that it's the low side. This side doesn't show that it's the high. But you can put two and two together on that. If we were going to be taking these off and then putting them back on for some reason, we can mark it. Use a little crayon, chapstick. Not chapstick, lipstick, whatever you got, nail polish. It's easy to remember. You want to give it a little spray. It's always helpful and try to hold this steady. We're going to be using a 10 millimeter socket, six point. See if we can get it on there. Try to break it free. There's one. It comes off fairly easily. It might be a good idea to take note of which direction they're facing in. You don't want it facing up if it's supposed to be facing down. So we know that it went this way. Just put a little mark, a little mark.
That'll just give us reference to which way it's going to be angled when we put it back together and it would be the same process for removing this with your 10 millimeter socket. Break it free. Take it off and that'll be how you'd remove and then replace these.
So now it's time to reinstall our horn assembly to the bracket. We marked where it's going to line up. It's going to be very simple. We're going to take our 10 millimeter head nut, put it right on here, hand tighten it on and then we can go ahead and tighten it on with our ratchet or wrench, whatever you have access to. Its your preference. It doesn't need to be super tight. Get it a little snug. Now we have our horn assembly all set for re-installation. Now it's time for reinstalling our horn assembly. Going to be very simple. We're going to line up this little piton right here with the slot that we have right next to the bull hull. Simple. Just line it up. If you wanted to while it's apart, you can hook back up your wires. You can do that so we can we see it actually. Grab our bottom one. You can't really mix them up because the top one's not going to reach the bottom one when it comes to get it all together. There we are. As I said, we're going to put the piton in the slot.
Get our bolt going. You can do it by hand. When it gets tight, just go ahead and grab our ratchet assembly. With our 13 millimeter socket, you can use an extension, probably be helpful. This is very easy for me because I have the bumper assembly off. Just give it a little snug. There we go. Get this out of the way and now we successfully installed our horn assembly. All right, now it's time to install our bumper cover. We're going to be careful not to rub up against our fenders with it unless you don't care about your paint. I'm going to try hard though. See if we can get it settled in nice and easy. Just get that down along there. I'll worry about pressing it in in a minute. Just going to get it lined up along the top here. So we're going to get this lined up. We want to try to get this hole lined up under there, this one with there, this one there and so on. If you need to, you can use a little bit of her body force. We have two different types of clips here.
We have regular push clips and then the locking push clips. You can count them. There's two that are locking, four that are regular and they're different sizes. This right here is much wider than the other ones. So they go in the bigger holes. I'm going to put the two , there was one right here and the second one right here. These are the two bigger holes. If you want to, you can latch them down. I'm not going to worry about it yet. I'm going to try to get these lined up. Just give it a little push. Get that locked in. Come on over. The next one should just press in, hopefully. Sometimes, it's hard getting things lined up. Here it is. Come along. We got two more, two more holes. That's nice. See if I can get it in. If you needed to, you could use maybe a small hammer or whatever you got. If you don't have the thumb strength for it, that's okay. All right. So we got all these. Now we can go ahead and lock these down simply by pushing in the centers. You can line up the bumper along the headlights.
I might do a little bit of finagling here. I'm going to try to get it right along the seam of the fender. There's a little lip under there that's black. See if we can get it popped in. Looks like we need to give it a little bit of a tug to pull it. There we go. With some brute force, we'll do the same thing for the other side. Then we'll be clear to lift this up and we can put in our two screws and then go along the bottom and fill those in as well. Let's see. All right, so we have our little hidden screw holes here. Let's see if I can get it off. Get our screw, 10 millimeter bolt head in case we don't remember. That's okay. I'm just going to try to get it lined up and we are only screwing into plastic. Any time you hear that, just remember you don't have to go super tight. It's just to secure it in. That feels pretty good.
We can go ahead and push this up in here and then we're just going to go onto the other side and finish up with the bumper skirt. You should be all set. So here we go. We're going to grab this plastic. It's going to go underneath the plastic of your bumper or bumper cover, I guess. Your bumper would be the metal part. I'll get that lined up. If these things look like they're misaligned with the holes, they just move fairly easily. Then we can line them up. Take a peak. Of course, the first one that I put in moved a little bit. That's okay. Like I said, they move fairly easily. That looks good now. Okay. Take our three Phillips heads on our screwdriver. We're just screwing into plastic. So you don't have to go hard, like I keep saying. Let's get these in. Come down the line. There we are. Now we'll do the same on the other side and we can move on. So we have our splash shield. Let's say for some reason maybe you lost the clips that go up here.
You lost the pushpins or even you just didn't have any and you just needed to replace them. You don't have any replacements. What we could do is use a couple zip ties and the way we're going to do that, if you have access to something like this, you can go ahead and make a hole, something like that. You can use a drill bit if you wanted to do that. You could use anything that you wanted to make a hole, really. Very carefully use a pocket knife. For me, I'm just going to go ahead and use this. I got it nice and hot. I'm going to go like this, just rest it on there, melt myself a nice little hole. There's one. You don't want to breath in these fumes. I'm sure it's known in the state of California to cause cancer. There we are. Now we've got holes. Go ahead and turn this off. Let it finish doing what it's doing, making smoke clouds. So now we can go ahead and match this up, bring it up here. Looks fairly. So we can use our zip ties.
It's going to be hard getting the first one started. Going to be flopping around. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to get it started down here. We'll go through and then I'm going to bring it back through. If you wanted to, you could use bigger zip ties. Something a little stronger might be better. For what I'm doing, I'm just going to do it. Let's see. Let's go this way. That makes more sense, doesn't it? Bring it through. Just get it started. We don't need to tighten it up yet. Now we can just let this hang down. We can grab our other zip ties, continue on. Going to leave them loose until we get in our pushpins. Get it lined up with the hole. Push it right in. Get our last one. See if we can get it up in there. Take our center pushpin. Lock it up in. There we go. Now we can go ahead and tighten these down. We'll just go down the line. You can leave them down if you like that. Trim them off if you don't. Kind of looks like a neat little thing.
But there we go.
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