How to Remove Power Steering Cooler 2010-17 Chevy Equinox

Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, I'm working on a 2015 Chevy Equinox, doing a power steering cooler. It's going to be very simple. 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.

What we're going to do is we're going to try to get this little plastic plate off of here. There's some push clips. I'm going to go ahead and remove these. The center of these pulls up from the outer part of it. I'll show you what it looks like here. That's what they look like. When you have the center pushed in, it forces those two sides out, which holds it in the hole. That's why you lift up the center part. It relieves pressure and this thing can squish. It slides right out of the hole. We're going to do the same thing for all of these. Just a little spot that you can try to get your tool into. I'm using my little forky tool. You can use whatever you've got. A pocket screwdriver usually works pretty well. Let's set these aside.

Sometimes they come apart. That's okay. I'll just hold it back together, easy peasy. We've got those four out. See if I can grab this plastic. Wiggle it around, see what's holding it in. Now that we've got this side off, we're going to do the same to the other side of the vehicle, and then we'll go ahead and we'll start removing the rest of the bumper cover.

There we go, that one out of the way. Now, we're going to remove these. These are Torx bits, little T20s, like little stars. This is what the tool looks like. Put it in here, turn it to the left, lift them all out. I'm going to leave one in. I'm just going to have it loose, though. That's just going to make it so the bumper cover stays on while we continue down to the bottom there and it'll hold it up for us.

That's what those look like. They're all the same. We've got the one that's still there, of course. That's going to move around a little bit. Perfect. Let's move along.

We're going to do some push clips here. We got a push clip right there. There's going to be another one right in front of this tire, right there, here, and here. After we remove those, there's a T20 and a T20 there. Same tool that we used up top, we're going to use down bottom. I've got my little forky tool, I got a little pocket screwdriver. I'm going to see about trying to pull out the centers of these push clips. I showed you how they worked already. I'll show you again just in case. When it was closed it was like that. I just go in between, pull out the center, and then it unlocks the little edges there. Here we go. We got that one, and move down the line. Grab this guy.

This one is going to be a little harder to get to because of the tire, but I'm sure it can be done. Got our push clips. I'll set it aside. Got our T20 here, here.

They both look the same. Easy peasy, can't mix them up. That feels pretty great. Take a peek under here. We got that bolt right there. I'm going to grab the size for that real quick. I'll let you know what it is. Once we get that out, we're going to do the same exact thing to the other side of the vehicle, and then we'll lift it up more and we'll grab everything from underneath.

We got our 7mm. We're going to blast this out of here. There it is. Set that aside. I'm going to give that a little tug. Perfect. Now, like I said, we're going to do the same exact thing on the other side of the vehicle. We'll raise it up, we'll continue on releasing the rest of this bumper cover. Disconnect the fog lights, of course, then we should be clear to bring it back down and pop it all right off.

Under here, we've got our fog light assemblies. You can see them from the back side. We've got some wiring that goes to the bulb. We're just going to turn the bulb to the left, counterclockwise, till it stops, and then we're carefully going to pull it out. Let's see. We'll give it a quick inspection. We got our rubber seal there. Slide it back over, easy enough. Should be easy enough without the plastic in my hand. There it is, cool.

Something to note. You want to be very careful not to touch on that glass, especially if you've got oily hands or anything like that. Even gloves isn't really the best to touch the glass, so if you can avoid it, that's always great. Take a look, see if it looks like it's black in any way or discolored or swollen or the filament inside looks like it's got any like crusty buildups on it. If that was the case, you'd want to replace it, and right on the back of the bulb you can see what the bulb number is. It's an H11 on this particular vehicle, so I'm sure it is on yours as well if you're working on the same thing.

I'm just going to leave this down to dangle. That's a funny word, but anyway, I'm going to leave it so it can hang like that and I'm going to do the same to the other side, and then we'll just go ahead and we'll remove a couple of more bolts here. Get the lower part of this thing moving, and then we'll go ahead back up top. We'll take off the last bolt and we should be able to slide this right off.

Here we go. This part right here is part of the inner wheel well that we're taking apart up there, so we want to remove these two bolts. We're going to continue with our 7mm. I'll turn these to the left, obviously. Right along. This little electric tool is amazing. Slides out, it's clear to come off. It's got a little triangle here, so when you pull it off you can see. That just means when you're putting it back together, that triangle is going to go back under there. Just holds it, you can put your bolts back in. Easy peasy. Cool. This is wobbling around pretty easily now. I would say we're clear to bring it back down and we'll start pulling it off.

Here we go. Time for our last bolt up top here. Going to hold our bumper cover, make sure it doesn't want to come loose too much on us until we can figure out exactly what's going on. Don't forget, we have our fog lamp bulbs just hanging under there, so the less that we jiggle this around probably the better overall. Just going to see if I can get this off.

There we are. Now, we've removed our front bumper cover. Here we go. First thing first, we've got our collection receptacle under here to make sure we're not going to get any fluid on the ground or pollute the environment, save the penguins and the dolphins and everybody, really. This one, do the same thing. Cool. Now, we're just going to grab something so we can twist these hoses a little bit. You can try to use something like pliers, and you want to be careful not to rip the hoses. You just want to give them a little twist to break them free. I feel like they're moving okay. Cool.

Just going to try to give it a little tug. If it doesn't seem like it wants to come free, you can go ahead and stick a small screwdriver or if you have a pick, you want to get between the hose and the metal part of the cooler itself. If you can get in here... just like that. Try to put a little bit of lubricant or penetrant in there if you want it'll probably help along the way. I'll just grab this. Try to work it in. Here we go. I'm just going to pull and twist, pull and twist. This one is ready to come off. I'm going to leave it.

I'm going to do the same thing to the other one, being careful not to stab myself or poke myself, I should say. I'm going to give it a little spray, my safety glasses on. Going to try to work it around. Got my hand protection on to make sure I don't get any chemicals or fluids on my skin. Twist and pull. If we can get it off here... there we are. Got our bucket ready.

There we are. Just let this drain into the bucket real quick. Once it slows down or finishes, we'll go ahead and do the same thing to the other one. We're going to take out a 10 here and a 10 there. We'll pop that little clip off. Easy peasy, just goes over that. That seems pretty good. Let's go ahead and do this one. Cool beans. While that's doing its thing, I'm just going to wipe off my hands. I'm going to grab a 10mm. We're up in here.

It's coming pretty loose here where everything is nice and slippery from the fluid. Almost there. Got our two bolts. I'm going to grab this, pull it down, drain it out into our receptacle. Once it's done draining, you can go ahead and recycle the metal. There you are. Now, we've removed our power steering cooler.

Here we go. We're going to take our power steering cooler, we're going to get it back up to where it needs to go. If you want, you can try to start the lines in. It might be a little bit hard without it actually mounted, so it's really up to you. I'm not going to worry about that right now, but I am just going to take these mounting bolts. I'm going to start that one in. I'm not going to tighten it until I get the other one started, of course. It's pretty basic. Start that one in. Perfect. We'll grab our 10. We're going to tighten both of these up. Now that they're both started, we can tighten them right up. Nice.

It's not going anywhere. Love it. I'm going to take my hose, bend it up here, push it right one. This one, same thing. Here we go. Both of those are on until they bottomed out. There's a little lip, a little lip, the hose goes right to it. Perfect. Grab what you got for pliers, needle nose, regular pliers, whatever you got in your hand, fingers. If you're strong enough, you could probably... yeah, you could do it, or it can be done, I should say. There we are. It looks good. Take this one and do the same thing. Get up on there, try to line it up to where it was before. A little bit... very nice.

Now, you want to make sure you clean it down. You can use a little bit of parts cleaner or whatever you might happen to have. Make sure you've got your receptacle under there and you've got your safety glasses on in case anything splashes back. Careful not to breathe in the vapors from this stuff, by the way. Known in the State of California to cause birth defects and cancer and all sorts of things, just like breathing regular air or drinking water. There you go. Perfect. Can move along.

Just one last thing. We got our little duct head clip. Boop. Push him on there. He likes it there. Perfect. Now, we're going to go ahead and we're going to put our bumper cover back on. Here we go. We've got our bumper cover. We're going to lift it up on here. We're going to be careful of these edges to make sure that they don't go hitting up against the fender. This one is a little damaged, but that wasn't me, by the way. Just playing, but it really wasn't, though.

Anyway, I'm just going to keep those edges low and I'm just going to scoop the top in up here. Just get it kind of settled in. I'm going to start a couple of these bolts just to hold it for me, and then I'm going to work my way along the edges there. Get everything settled in along the top, and then I'll go down to the bottom and do the same thing. What size is this? 20. Torx bit 20.

Keep it loose, just in case we have to move some stuff around. Just want to make sure that it can't fall down, hit the floor. Like I said, I'm keeping all of these loose. I'm just starting them in so I can move everything around as I need to. Nice and loose. Let's come along here. Right up along the headlamp, we have the little scoops, and then you come over here, you got a little clip, clip, clip, clip, clip. That's where your bumper is going to want to ride in, so you're going to need to bring it up. Bring it right up along your headlamp. The bumper cover itself has all these little slots in it. That's where those clips are going to want to ride. You're probably going to need to give it a little tug, just to get it into where it needs to go.

Good. I'm going to do the same thing to the other side. We've got the bumper all lined up. It looks great. Couldn't ask for better, really. I'm just going to take my Torx bit 20, snug these puppies up.

Very nice. Now, let's lift up to our working height so we can get to those wheel wells. We'll get all of those put together, then we'll bring it all the way up. We'll plug in our fog lights and finish up along the bottom. We remember that we had the one 7mm head bolt. It goes right up through here. It goes through the bottom of the bumper cover up into the fender. I'll just use my little tool. You can use a ratchet, whatever you got. I'm just going to find my hole here. There it is. Nice and snug. I'm going to grab this, slide it back into position here. Now, when we look at it, you can see behind there. There's a metal piece. That's where there's a screw. This one is just a big gaping hole. That's a plug, screw, hole, hole, hole. Let's see what we got for parts.

We've got two screws, perfect. I remember saying we needed two screws. We got four little push clips, so we didn't lose anything. We're doing all right. There we are. Let's do the push clips first because they'll kind of keep everything kind of generally speaking where it should be, and then you can worry about putting in all of those screws after. Here we go, so two screws. I'm just going to grab my little Torx bit. I got it right here. Sticking with my 20. Turn the wheel, or not. See if I can get this in. I'm going to grab a ratchet. I'll finish that one off in one second. There we are. Grab my ratchet.

Feels great. All of those are still in. Perfect. We'll do the same to the other wheel well, and then we'll bring it up and continue. Now, we're going to put in our fog lamps. Once again, we're going to be very careful not to touch that glass. We'll just check them one more time to make sure the filament is not broken. We did a lot of moving around. I'm just going to take it, put it up in here. I'm going to start by going all the way as far counterclockwise as I can, and then I'm going to turn it to the right so it locks in. It should be straight up and down in the locked in position.

I come over and do the same thing over here. Check it. Looks pretty great. The filament is not broken, nothing moving around. I didn't touch the glass. I'm going to bring it over. I'm going to turn it all the way counterclockwise as far as I can until it grabs, then I'm going to bring it back to the right. Once it sets in, I'm going to bring it down. It's locked. It's in the straight up and down position. All ears are in. Cool. Now, we're going to grab this. We got our little triangle ear here. It's going to slide over that just like this. Sets in. We're going to do the same thing to the other side. We've got two bolts. Easy peasy.

I've got my bolts. I'm just going to take them and I'm just going to put them in. There we are. This one. Right here. This one. Very nice. Everything feels great. We'll bring it back down. We'll finish up with the top, and we should be all done.

Now, it's time to put these up along the top. Got our little clips here. Like I said, if you looked at this and you didn't see the metal clip, it's probably inside these holes right here. If that was the case, you'd want to just take them out. You can use something like a pocket screwdriver or whatever you have to do. Get them out of there, put them back on this. You can't just go ahead and put this plastic into those metal clips if they're down there. They just only torque that way.

Anyway, we're going to line up these with these holes, being careful not to scratch any of our paint. Just like always, we're trying real hard to do a good job here. That slides under there, this up here. Got our holes lined up. Just give it a little bonk. Bonk, bonk. This slid in there. We got four push clips. One here, one there, here, and there. You can do them in any order. You do your boo boo. Slide them in, and then push in the center. Slide it in, push in the center. On to the last, slide it in, push in the center.

This under here should go right in there. Very nice. We get this puppy lined up. There's just a little hole in it right there and that slides over this. It's just kind of like a rain drip guard type of deal. Here we are. Looks pretty great. We'll do the same to the other side, and then we're all set.

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