How to Replace AirbagHorn Pad 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, we're working on our 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser, and I'm going to show you how to remove the airbag/horn pad. It's going to be very easy, I can do it, you can do it too. If you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com, thanks.

All right, so first thing we want to do now that we have the hood open, we're going to remove our negative battery terminal. When you do this, you're going to lose your radio presets, your clock of course. Pretty much anything you have preset inside the vehicle is going to be reset. So keep that in mind, if your stereo has some sort of security, you're going to want to make sure that you have the security numbers to get back into it. And of course, make sure that your doors are unlocked and you're able to get into the vehicle.

So, we're going to go ahead and loosen this up right here, using our 10 millimeter. This is the negative battery terminal. Pull it off. I'm just going to slide it right down behind the battery there, so there's no possible way it can come back up and make contact with the battery. Now we're going to wait the specified amount of time for the battery to do the discharge and then we'll go ahead on with the next step. So right here is the little plastic cover, We're going to remove this cover. Behind there, there's going to be a T30, you're going to use a torx bit for that.

On the other side of the steering wheel, there's either going to be another cover like this, or if you already have a cruise control switch, you're going to have the cruise control switch coming through with a cover around it, okay? So, let's move ahead. We'll grab our trim tool and probably a small pocket screwdriver, see if we can get that to pop out. So generally speaking, when you're dealing with plastic, if you don't want to scuff it up, you want to go ahead and use something like this, a plastic trim tool. The problem with these is, well, if you can get it in there, usually they're pretty thick and they're very hard to get into tight places. So I'm just going to go ahead and try to go with a small pocket screwdriver, see if I can find an edge. That'll let me in, try to pop this out of here. There we are.

So judging by the look of this, the best way to come in, it looks like it would be from this side right here, try to go in and then try to give your pocket screwdriver a little twist. It should separate it enough to slide this part out and then should come apart. All right, so we'll set that aside. Right inside here is our torx bit 30, this is what I'm talking about. It looks kind of like a star that's going to go right inside this. This is a captured bolt, which just means that once you have it fully loosened, it's not actually going to come completely out, fall and hit the floor, hit you in the eye or anything like that, it's stuck right inside the steering wheel unit. So I'm just going to leave this as it for now, I'm going to go ahead over to the other side and I'm going to remove the other side as well.

All right, so I came right in, right up along here, stuck it in, give it a little twist, came out nice and easy, easy peasy. So there we are. Just got the little doodad hole. This is going to go through and then okay, we've got our torx bit 30 bolt right there, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you have an electric screwdriver, you can use that. It's super important to make sure that you, when you disconnect the battery, you wait a few minutes, okay. If you can wait like five, maybe even 10 minutes, that would be best. You want to make sure that the electrical systems discharged because underneath here is your airbag unit.

Here we are like that, free off of there. I'm going to come up here. I'm just going to grab this unit right here, give it a little wiggle. There's going to be wiring behind it so you don't want to go ahead and pull and expect it to just go, I don't know, into the next room. Just give it a nice little tug. And here's all the wiring I'm talking about. You've got this for your horn and these are for your airbag. So I'm going to grab the horn wire here. This is just a ground wire so you don't have to necessarily worry about it touching up against anything metal. Okay? Not that it would matter anyway because the battery is disconnected but just to say., Now these right here to get them off, what you do is you take your pocket screwdriver, you go in between and try to lift up the little yellow thing in the middle. Okay, just going to come under it. Lift it, then come under this one.

They should be marked underneath with the specific colors, so you can't mix up which wire goes where. But in case you, in case it's not, I don't know what's under there yet. Orange is on the left. Well the left, if you're looking at it, I guess it would technically be the passenger side if it was on. But anyway, on the left looking at it and the blacks on the right. Okay, so now what we do is just grab these, go ahead and pull it off. We got black under there. Black to black. Cool. Let's see if we got orange under here. I'm sure we do, sometimes getting these disconnected, cool, orange. So, foolproof, can't mix that up.

So now it's time to go ahead and install our horn pad/airbag. We've got the backside, we remember orange goes to orange, black to black. That's pretty basic. We don't need to say it, but say it anyway. Try to get the orange in here, there we are. Push in on the little yellow plastic thing. That's the lock, that makes until this can fall off. If you forget that this wire could fall off driving down the road and it could cause issues. So let's avoid that. Just go ahead and put this in. Pushing the lock. Give them both a nice little wiggle, they feel good. This is our horn ground wire, just going to slide right on that little prong, just like that. Give it a nice little tug, it's not going anywhere. All right, let's move ahead to the next step.

So here we are, let's get it slid in. Here we are. We're going to take our T30, the star, go right in here to this bolt, start it in and do the same to the other side, and then I'll snug them both up. Started, the other one started so I'll just go ahead and snug this one up. Same for this one, nice and snug. I've got a little cover. Got The little pronged end, it's going to go up against this side. So we'll start in with the forward side. Clip that in, clean it off, make it look nice and pretty again. Do the same to the other one, so it's got the little hole. It goes in the same as the other side. You start with the forward end and then just pop in the rearward end. That's it, easy-peasy. Let's move ahead to the next step.

So we've got our negative terminal. We'll bring it back up to where it's going to go. When you go to connect your negative terminal onto the battery, you might notice a spark or an arc. You might hear a noise, it might startle you a little bit, basically. Don't be scared, just go ahead and put it, on one and done. Don't go on off, on, off, on, off, it makes me scared, just on, okay? There we are, get that on there. I'm going to go ahead and snug this up, give it a little wiggle, it's going nowhere. If this is still loose, you need to make sure you tighten it up. You don't want this wobbling around. We'll close our hood and on the road again.

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