How to Remove Washer Fluid Level Sensor 1997-2005 Lexus GS300

Hey, everyone. It's Len from 1A Auto. Today, I'm going to be showing how to replace a washer fluid sensor. This is a level sensor. It's going to be very simple. This is a 2001 Lexus GS300, and when you replace it, you should also replace the gasket. If you need any parts, you can always come down to 1Aauto.com.

We're going to start removing the 10 bolts that are under here. They're 10 millimeters. A couple of them are missing, so we'll just skip onto the next. I've got them right here. Very simple. This is what it's going to look like. There should be 10 of them under here. Just go all the way around. Here's the last one. All right. Put those all safely, so we won't lose anymore. 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 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 inside there's going to be another little harness. You can either disconnect the harness or just remove the whole unit from the assembly itself. Then, we're going to go over to the other side and do the same exact thing.

All right. Now that we've got those 10 out, and we've got the bulbs and everything disconnected, I wanted to show you up inside here. Right there, there's another 10-mm head screw. We're going to use our 10-mm socket. Put it on there. If you have an extension, that would be great. Turn it to the left. We're going to remove that fully and 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.

Continuing with our 10-mm 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. Let's see. I'm going to come around to the other side and see if I can break this free and maybe it'll help get that side free. Here we go. It 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. It's just a plastic cover. We'll put it someplace, so hopefully it won't get too scratched up.

All right. Now that we're going to be replacing this washer fluid level sensor, we're going to notice that it has two wires going into it. What we're going to do is we're going to take a bucket of some sort so we can collect any washer fluid that comes out of this. We're going to give this a little wiggle, watching your eyes. Make sure you're wearing safety glasses at all times. We'll pull that right out. Here's your level sensor. Once this continues draining out, or finishes draining out, I'm going to show you how to disconnect it and replace it.

Now that it's out and mostly drained, we're going to go ahead and squish this tab right here, give it a little pull, once again checking inside this wiring connector and make sure there's no green, blue, or brown, any color that shouldn't be there. When you go to replace this sensor right here, you might notice that you're going to have to replace this gasket right here. It's very simple. You can grab it with your hands and pull it right out.

All right. Now that we have it out, we're going to double check the gasket and make sure it's going to seal right. It looks good to me. We're going to reinstall the gasket, and you'll notice that it goes two ways. We're going to put the fat side out. It goes in nice and easy. Looks good. Next, we're going to take our level sensor, you'll notice that when the level goes up, this goes up. Level goes down, this goes down. When it goes down, light turns on your dash and says, "Hey, add some washer fluid." When we install it, we're going to put this tab facing straight up. Just push it right in. That feels great. Next, we're going to install our wiring harness, you hear a click, and that's good to go.

All right. Now, we're going to go ahead and start putting this bumper cover back on being very careful not to scratch our lenses with any plastic. Just try to come up and over. We're going to just sit 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 out bolts. That's going. That looks good. I'm going to grab my bolts and we'll move onto the next step.

All right. Taking some of our fine pitch bolts right here with a 10-mm head, we're going to go ahead and line up our holes. As you can see, it lines up pretty well. Put it in there. Try to get it a little bit started. See, I need to give a little push just to give it a little coercion. It 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. Then, 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. 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 and turn to the right. It 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 over to the other side and 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. We're going to take it and come from behind, always with the safety glasses so nothing falls in your eyes. 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 it right off the bat, that's fine, just keep spinning it. At some point, it will line up. Let's see. 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. It latches right now. 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. 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 is 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. It clips in.

Then we're going to take our 10-mm-head bolt, and we're just going to start it in there and we're going to go all the way along the whole lower 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.

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