How to Replace Front Door Latch 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser, and I want to show you how to do a left front inner door latch. This is the latch that holds the door shut. If you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

So, here we go. One of the first things we're going to do now that the door's open, we're going to get behind this right here. Take something small like a pocket screwdriver or whatever you have that you can wedge in there, and then pry this up. Let's see. There we are. Behind here there's a little push clip. Always take a look at your wiring, make sure there's no funny colors. That one looks good. I'll tuck it away for now. Okay. Take a look behind here. Okay. I don't see any bolts, anything that's holding our panel on. So, let's move along.

Right here there's a little cover, see if I can get my pocket screwdriver in there. Looks like there's a Phillips head screw. So, let's remove that. We've got another one right here, another little panel-looking thing. Let's see if I can get it. Cool. There we go. Looks like a Phillips head. Awesome. See if I can get ... Phillips head #2. It's a little longer than the first, so try to keep that in mind. Here's what we're dealing with. Short one, up top. Longer one, down bottom. Okay? Let's move along.

Right here, there's a little push clip. All you do on these, is you push in the center. See if I can get it. There you are. Once that's pushed in, it's in the unlocked position. You should be able to grab the outer ring of the pushpin. Slide it right out. Okay. To reset that, all you do is you just push it all the way through like that. Now it's good to go. When you reinstall it, you want to have the pin facing out. Put it in your hole. Push this in so it's flush. And now it's in the locked position. Oh. All right. Watch out for that. Cool. All right. Now let's just take a feel around, make sure there's no more bolts. Feels pretty good. Cool. All right. Let's move along.

We'll grab our door panel tool. I'm going to grab one more, a little thicker. I'm going to show you how to get this off. So, now we're just going to feel along the bottom, feel where our door panel is. I'm going to see if I can get my plastic tool up in between here. Wow. That's really in there. Cool. Okay. Grab one that's a little stronger. Just going to come around. Couple of pins. Those all slight right back in, easy-peasy. Show you in a minute. Okay. So, behind here we have our cables, okay? This one's the door lock, up along the top. This should be right in here, so I'll put it in to show you. Okay. Assuming it's where it should be, which is where it is, all you do is take the light. You pry it away. Then, you lift right up through there. There's a little slot. Okay? Just goes through like that, and like that. Easy-peasy. Next I'm going to take this green one, do the same thing. Remove those. Now, we've removed our left front door panel, easy-peasy.

Okay. So, now we're going to go ahead and take off this vapor barrier right here. To do that, just grab a little tab, pull along. This black stuff right here is super-sticky and it'll get pretty nasty on your clothes if you get it on your clothes. So, keep that in mind. If you get some on your clothes, it's going to become an issue trying to do some laundry. Let's see about getting this off. I'm trying my darnedest not to tear this vapor barrier too much, the plastic aspect of it. I'd like to stick it back on if I can. There we are, a little bit of chewing gum. Don't really chew on it. It's probably not the best for you. Now we've removed our vapor barrier.

So, here we go. Going to remove this bolt, show you what it looks like. We're going to remove all four of them. Hold my plate. Inner plate. Wide end goes at the bottom. In case you mix it up and you forget, don't worry. These are further apart than those. Easy-peasy. We'll set this stuff aside. So, now that we have the vapor barrier out of the way, I'm just going to grab this little yellow clip right here, okay? Pocket screwdriver. I'm just going to pry it so it comes off of this bar here, okay? Now, I'm going to grab the rod and try to give it a little tug, see if I can push this up out of the way a little bit more.

Okay. Let me see. This little rod ... There it is. Just comes right out, okay? When we go to reinstall it, you just push it in the hole and then flip that yellow lock down, okay? So, we get that out of the way. Next, what we're going to do, there's going to be a little push clip here for this wiring harness. It's right along the right-hand side. Just give it a little push. Give it a little tug. We'll take a peek. I don't see any corrosion, no rust. It looks like it's good to go. If you happen to see any funny colors in there, well, you're going to have to take care of business, okay? I don't see anything, so I'm going to keep moving along.

I have a 10 millimeter here. And on the outside where the latch is, they're T27s. That's a Torx bit, looks something like that. A nice little star. 27, okay? So, we'll take this off. This right here is for the window regulator. And all that's going to do ... Well, not for the window regulator. Sorry. The window channel. Yeah. The window channel comes right down along here, and it kind of sits in the way of where that latch is going to be coming out. So, I'm just going to go ahead and remove this. That should give me a little bit of play with the window channel to be able to get the latch out. That's what our bolt looks like. We'll set this aside so we can find it. We'll move along out here.

Here we are. We're going to use a T27. That's the bit I showed you, just looks like a star. That's what the bolt looks like. Okay? It's a little beveled. I'm just going to put it in a couple threads. Here we are. Now I can fully remove the other two, and I don't have to worry about the latch coming off or falling. Number two looks the same as the first. Number three, same. Set this stuff aside. Okay. I'm going to reach inside, see if I can find my latch assembly. Yeah. I got my hand on it. Last bolt. Let me see if I can pull my latch assembly down and out. Now we've removed our left front door latch assembly. Easy-peasy.

Now it's time to go ahead and install our door latch assembly. All I'm going to do, put my cables up through here real quick, bring my latch assembly in. When I have it inside, I want to make sure that I have this arm right here. This is the arm that we took that yellow thing off of. It wants to be facing toward the outer portion of the door, not towards the hinge side. You can spin it if you want. That's going to be facing the wrong way. It needs to go this way so we can make sure we put it in and latch it down. All right? Going to grab one of my bolts just so I can have it ready. Get my bar ready again. Here it is. Okay. Can see our window track flopping around in there. We need to get behind that.

Whatever you have to do to make it happen, captain. Uh-huh. There we are. Love it. Okay. Pick which one you want to put it in. Let's see if I can get it a little bit closer, here. This has to sit up in there. There it is. Okay. Where's my ... Getting everything to line up here can be a little bit of a chore. That looks pretty good. Okay. Grab my other three, or my other two. Just try to get this gasket. Doesn't do anything. It's not like it's an airtight situation or anything like that. But, just like to try to get it close to the way I took it out. There we go. That looks pretty good. A little bit more up there in the top. Okay.

I'm going to get all these started. Very nice. Okay. Before I tighten these down, I'm going to make sure I get that rod in and situated, and get the window channel situated. That way there, I can still move everything around if I have to here. Okay. I've got my rod. I'm going to put it in that hole. Give it a little push. Take my clip. That's locked in. Give it a little wiggle. Okay. Now, we've got our window channel. That just pulls and comes right up against this, where we took it off. Let's see if we can get everything lined up. There it is. I'm just going to grab my bolt. Remember, it was the one with the big washer there. Nice and snug. Just reach in, give it a little wiggle. I don't see anything hitting up against each other in there. Looks good. Okay.

We've got our cables. These go something like this. Okay. Cool. So, the white one's for the lock. The green one itself is for the latch. All right? Take this. We can plug it back in. There we are. Now we're going to go ahead and tighten these up using my T27. Give it a little shake. Nice and tight. Feels good. Cool beans. Let's go ahead and get this plate back on here. We've got four bolts. One, two, three, four. The bottom side is the wider side. So, just get down here. We'll get them all started in. Bonk, bonk. There we go. Cool. Okay.

So, we've got our vapor barrier, goes something like this. You got your little blue area. That goes up on the top left. The reason for that is because that's where your cables are going to slide through. So, being careful of all that black goo, like I said in the beginning of the video, super-sticky. It'll ruin your clothes. It'll get stuck on your arm, be stuck there for days. We'll just go ahead and see about getting everything stuck back on here as good as we can. Once I get it pretty much where I want it, I'll go back around and I'll stick it on there good. Okay. Got it all lined up. Just going to follow the track here, push it on all the way around. Cool. Very nice. All right. Let's move to the next step. Okay.

Now we can go ahead and put our rubber back in here just like that. Easy-peasy. So, on your door panel, you'll notice that you have a whole bunch of these little clips, right? Maybe when you were taking it off, one of them came shooting off like this one, little piton. Going to take it, just going to slide it in the hole. There we are. All the rest of them are still on there, so I'd say we're clear to move on to the next step of getting our panel on.

We'll bring it over. I'm going to take this back off of here real quick. Cool. We've got our cables, all right? The white one goes on top, green on the bottom. So, that means that the white goes for the lock, and the green goes for the handle. So, going to start with the bottom. That's what I do. Just going to slide it in. Slide it in there. Same thing for here. Okay. Easy-peasy. Grab our little cable, get it up where we need it. The door panel itself kind of has a little hook like this. It's going to sit down over this. All right? Just going to bring it up and bring it down, set it right down along there. Here we go. It's time for the fun part, little bonk. Bonk. Bonk. Bonk. That's my thing. Cool. Feels like it's nice and secure. We've got a screw hole, a screw hole, a little push button, and then our switch. Let's do it.

Big screw goes in the lower hole. See if I can get my head in there. Okay. I'll close that puppy up. Very nice. Grab our next screw. These are just screwing into plastic, so you don't have to get too carried away with tightening them down. There we are. I'll close this up. All right. Should want to stay, but ... Why doesn't it want to stay? Hold on. Try that. There we are. Cool. Connect our switch. It's going to go in there like that. This is just going to sit down in there like that. There we are. All right. So, we got this down. Let's move along. We'll get in this one, last little push clip here. There we are. Now, let's test everything. Grab the window. Good. Door locks. Good. Let's test the latch, the door handle. Perfect. Great job, everybody.

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