How to Replace 3rd Brake Light Trim Piece 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1AAuto. Today I'm working on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser and we just removed the third brake light mounting trim piece. It was very simple. I can do it. You can do it too. If you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay. So first thing we need to do is pop the glass. So you just take your key inside the door lock here and hold it for a few seconds. There we are. Now we have a clear view of what's going on and we can move to the next step.

The next thing we're going to want to do is remove this plastic right here. There's going to be a little clip right about here and possibly one right about there. Essentially there's two clips under here. It's going to feel like this piece is really stuck on there pretty good, but it'll pop off. You can use something like this, a little trim tool, if it makes it better for you. Try to sneak it in there. There we are. Push clip, push clip. Those go right into these holes. We'll set this aside and we can move ahead to the next step.

Okay. So now let's start disconnecting our electrical connectors here. This right here is a push button. You can push in with your finger and then just kind of grip it and pull it straight down. We always take a look at our electrical connectors to make sure there's no funny colors. Rainbow colors inside of electrical connectors are no good, so if you see green, blue, red, pretty much anything aside from metal, you're going to want to service that. This one looks great. I'll set it aside.

We'll move over here. This has a little push right here. That's going to help pop this out. The back side should have one too, but of course that one's a little harder to get to, so you're just going to have to use a little bit of brute force and see if you can get it to wiggle out of here. There we are. You got one push there and one there out of the way.

So here we are. We're going to push right on this right here, and that's going to push in on this pad. If you notice when you're pushing and that tab doesn't seem to move just try and squeeze it together a little bit, then give it a try. That looks like it pushes down that tab a little bit more and it separates real easy. Always take a look inside your electrical connectors. These look good. If you see any funny colors make sure you service those. These look great. I'm going to set them aside. Let's move ahead to the next step.

So this is for the washer fluid hose. I'm just going to grab it on both sides of the black. I'm going to try to separate right here. There we are. Make sure we didn't rip the hose. That looks great. This is still good. We'll set that stuff aside.

If we bring it this way we'll notice we have a clip right there. These are usually pretty hard to get out, so I like to use something like this. It's my little forky tool. Let me see if I can press it in there, give it a little twist, and it pops right out. Okay, I'm going to come along and do the same thing there. Okay, cruising along. Just grab this one. There we are. We'll set this aside.

So here's our hinge, right? We have this right here. This is an Allen head bolt. It's a 5 millimeter. That holds on this plastic piece. We'll come across. There's another one all the way down at the other end, 5 millimeter. We also have a 10 millimeter head nut right here and another one located right there.

So let's start with the outer edge and go with my 5 millimeter Allen head. That's what it looks like, by the way. So there's the head of it. We'll set this aside, go over and do the other side. There we are, same as the first. We'll go put it over there with it. Now I'm going to switch over to my 10 millimeter and remove this nut and that nut over there.

At this point our plastic is moving pretty freely up there. Here's our nut, by the way. It's got a nice rubbery seal on there. Helps keep moisture out that could be trying to come in from the outside. Even though this is tucked up inside the seal anyway, they put it on there. I'm going to leave it on. For some reason I think the rubber is stuck on this one. I'll grab it real quick, my plastic trim tool here. There it is. Okay, so it's just the rubber stuck on there. We'll leave that on there.

Bring this down a little bit and grab onto this. Okay, so now we've got just a little bit of tape here, a little bit of tape right here. Okay, so now we'll move along. We're just going to remove the tape that goes along the plastic holding the defroster wires to it just like that and like that. Just come right across the whole thing. There's another one up there. Okay. Bring this down carefully here, right down here, and there we are, easy-peasy.

So now it's time to go ahead and put on our trim piece here. It's going to go right up along the top. Let's see if I can line it up. There it is. Okay, so we've got our nuts with our rubber gaskets on them. Just going to push the plastic down as we do this. Got my rubber gasket. Start that in there. I'm not going to tighten them down until I start those bolts as well.

The reason why I didn't tighten it down is so that I can move this around to line up the hole as needed. Sometimes it's not easy to get these started. There it is. Okay, that one's started. Getting these things started can be fun. I can be the biggest challenge of the day for something so simple, just starting a bolt. There we are. Okay, so they're all started now.

Start with the center and we'll snug these up. I don't want to go too tight because I'm going to be compressing it up against the glass, so I want to put as minimal pressure on the glass as possible. Turn that down. I'm just going to snug this up until I feel as though it bottoms out. Grab my little washer fluid hose and bring that down. Okay, bottom a teeny bit. Come over here and do the same thing. Okay, bottom a teen bit, right? Tight.

Let's move ahead to the outer bolts, using my 5 millimeter again. Okay, bottomed snug. Next bottomed snug. Give it a nice little wiggle. Feels good. Just take a peek at it real quick. That looks pretty great. Okay, let's move along to the next step.

Okay, so now what we're going to do, we're just going to get this up here and come right along here. Okay, this clip right here, it broke. I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to use a wire tie. Okay, come down along through here. I'm sorry I have to tell you how to use a wire tie, but I'm just going to bring it around, put it up and through, and just get that so it can't flop around. I don't want it getting caught anywhere, you know, making its way down in between the hinge or anything crazy like that. I want it to stay right up and out. It looks good there. We'll trim that off in one second. We'll keep moving here though.

Get that in there. We have our wire in. I'm just going to tape this back, stick it with our little sticky tape just there. So the washer nozzle comes underneath this little hooky-do there, so we're going to put it around that and right up in there.

Okay, grab this, third brake light pigtail. Listen for the click and give it a nice gentle tug. That feels great. Then grab this. We've got our lock right here and our lock slot there. Bring it in, click, give it a little tug. Feels good. Put that up in here. All right, let's trim that off and we'll move ahead to the next step. Okay, we'll dispose of that properly.

Okay, so we've got our two holes and our two clips. Just put your fingers near the holes so you know where to line them up with the clips and then press. It presses right in. Push these up and out of the way so they can't get caught on anything. Give it a little test. Very nice. Easy-peasy.

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