How to Remove Washer Fluid Pump 2006-12 Nissan Altima

Hey friends, it's Len down at 1A Auto. Today, I want to show you something very simple. We're going to be replacing a washer fluid pump on a 2010 Nissan Altima. Going to be a very simple job, and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. So, if you need any parts for your vehicle you can always check down to 1aauto.com. Thanks for checking in.

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, but here we go.

Start with the little forky looking one. Stick it under here. Pry it up. We'll put it someplace safe so 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. And 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 push pin. We're going to continue along, see if we can get under it and onto the next. Just give it a little tug, 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, 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 a ratchet and socket if you want, or a ratchet wrench, whatever you're into, 10 millimeter. We can go ahead and turn that counter-clockwise to reverse it out. Once we get this completely out, we'll go over to the other side of the vehicle, and we'll 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 seven millimeter head bolts right here. They come across, and they'll come across here if the rest of the splash shield is here. So, you can use a ratchet, or if you happen to have a little electric gun, that will 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. And then, we can get going on removing the rest of this bumper.

You can put a little downward force on it if you want, make sure you're wearing safety glasses in case anything comes falling down. Here we are, sounded like something fell down. Now, we're clear to start removing these push clips. Same as the top, you just pull out the top end of it, and then the bottom should come out as well. You can use our screwdrivers that we were using before. I 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 with the other one. We'll come over and grab it with our cutters nice and light, break it free. It's 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 Philips head screwdriver, or whatever you might have, but it's a Philips head on this. We're going to reverse all these bolts out or screws. It's 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 we'll go back up top and we'll dislodge it, and it should come right off. Last one needs removed. 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 this should come right off. So, we're back up top to our last pin that we pressed in there. We're going to do just like we did before and break it free, right 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, put it over here, grab onto it, should come free. Now, we've successfully removed our bumper cover.

All right, so to do any service to the reservoir system for the washer fluid system, we're going to have to drain the fluid. So, we're going to make sure we're wearing safety glasses in case anything comes out. Make sure we also have a catch basin, catch as much of this fluid as we can. We don't want it getting on the ground.

I'm just going to try to push this little pin right here, and if it doesn't seem like it wants to push, you can come under. Just lift this up, and take a peek in there, make sure there's no funny colors. Look good. Now, I'm going to go ahead and take my same screwdriver, whatever you might happen to have, pry bar, and go ahead and wiggle this a little bit. It's going to be a little bit of a fighter, might need to twist a little bit to come out.

So, once you get it past there, you should be able to get it twisting. The fluid's going to want to come out, so we're going to make sure we have our bucket ready. And, this should just want to pop right out. There's just a little rubber seal on there. Here it comes. We'll try to keep it controlled. The fluid, of course, will be full.

If you had a clean container that you wanted to catch this in, you could do that and reuse it. So, we've got our level sensor out. We can inspect it real quick. Looks like it's pretty good. We're just going to press it right in. Should pop in fairly easily, just like that. We're going to take our harness, push it right down. Clips right in.

So what we do here is, making sure we're wearing our safety glasses, we're going to start by removing the electrical connector. You can squeeze this tab. If you can't have enough finger pressure to squeeze that, you can also stick a small screwdriver underneath. Lift the tab from the locking device on the pump. Once it's off, take a look inside, make sure there's no funny colors. Rainbow colors are bad. You want to look for just plain old, nice, metal color.

Next, we can remove our pressure hose right here, let that drain into our collection bucket. Now all we have to do, essentially, is pull out this pump, straight out from the reservoir. It should be fairly simple. And try to grab on down here, wherever you have good grip. Fluid is going to come out, so make sure you're wearing your safety glasses.

And now, we've successfully removed our washer fluid pump. Once we have the pump out, we're clear to remove this gasket right here. It's just rubber. You can take a small screwdriver or whatever you might have access to. You're going to go between the reservoir and the rubber, pop it out. You can take a look at it, see if it looks like it's cracked, dry rotted, swollen.

This looks great. We can reinstall it. It's very simple, just going to get it started in there. Don't get your glove caught. We're going to grab our pump again. We're going to use the inlet side. This is the part that goes into the reservoir. This is the outlet side that goes to your washer fluid hose. We're just going to go ahead and put it in. Should just push in.

Next, we can connect our outlet hose. Goes right on, and then, our electrical connector clips right in. 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. I'll 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 there, this one there, and so on. If you need to, you can use a little bit of your 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 one here is much wider than the other ones. So, they go in the bigger holes. I'm going to put the two, always 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. That locked in, come on over, the next one should just press in, hopefully. Sometimes, it's hard getting things lined up. There it is. Come along, we've 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 I can go ahead and lock these down simply by pushing in the centers. You can line up the bumper along the headlights. 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. We got our ... 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 in up here, and then we're just going to go onto the other side, and we'll finish up with the bumper skirt. 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. We'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 peek. Of course, the first one 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 Philips heads on our screwdriver. We're just screwing in the plastic, so you don't have to go hard, like I keep saying. Just get these in, 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 push pins. Or even, you just didn't have any, and you just need to replace them. You don't have any of replacements. What we can do is, use a couple of 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 use to make a hole, really. Very carefully use a pocketknife. For me, I'm just going to go ahead and use this. I've 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 know that the state of California, it cause cancer. There we are. Now, we've got holes. Go ahead and turn this off, let it finish doing what it's doing. You can smoke clouds. So now, we can go ahead and match this up, bring it up here. Looks fairly good, 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. And go through, and 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 this. 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. And, I'll leave them loose until we get in our push pins, get it lined up with the hole, push it right in.

We got our last one, see if we can get it up in there. Take our center push pin, lock it up in. There we go, now we can go ahead and tighten these down. 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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