How to Replace Front Rear Diff Transfer Case Oils 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 change the fluids in the front and the rear dif, and also the transfer case, right in the center. It's going to be very easy, and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

We're going to remove this fill plug using our 24 millimeter socket. Just put it on there. You probably don't necessarily need to use a ratchet this long. It's just what I had on my cart, so I grabbed it. Make sure our collection buckets under there, just in case the fluid comes out, we don't want any fluid getting on the ground if we can avoid it. Okay, here's our fill plug. That flat thing's the gasket. Just make sure it's in decent condition. It looks all right. We'll clean that up in a minute.

Now that we know the fill plug comes out, we're clear to drain the oil, which is right down here. Oh, to check the fluid, all you do is you just take your gloved finger, you can put it in there, just try to curl it in and down a little bit. The fluids should be like maybe right below, right about this lip area right here above my finger, not necessarily up there, but at least to where that is. So I would just go in, give a little feel, the fluid is full, so that's good. If you were just checking the fluid, then you can go ahead and close it. I'm going to service as the fluid, so I'm going to put this on here, 24 millimeter.

The importance of removing the fill plug before the drain plug is just in case the fill plug is stripped and/or doesn't want to come out for some reason. You won't have an issue with having an empty differential. It's basic, but I just want to state it. This is going to come out into our collection bucket. We've got eye protection, hand protection. There we are. All right, we'll let that do its thing. But, you might notice when you're back here, is that when you took out the plugs, there's actually two different plugs. Maybe you noticed it, maybe you didn't, but I'm going to show you there is a difference. I'll clean it off first. This one right here, in the center, actually has a magnet. The other one, not so much. Okay.

The reason for that is the lower one or the drain would have the magnet, it's going to catch any flakes of metal that might get swirled around inside your fluid. You're off-roading or doing whatever you do, small chunks of metal come off. I mean, it is what it is. They're going to get caught on the magnet, hang out down here, and they won't keep swirling around inside the differential. Okay. So, the magnet one goes in the bottom. The one without the magnet goes in the top. We'll just continue cleaning this off real quick, so it's clean. So we've got the one with the magnet, it's going in the drain hole, which is the lower hole. I'm just going to bottom this out, 24 millimeter. There we are. We're going to torque that when we're done, but first we're going to fill this up with 80-90 gear oil.

When you get your bottles, generally speaking, they're going to come with a little tip on them like this, and the tips have a little cover. The cover comes off, and you just trim the tip to the size that you want. I usually like to go above the nub right here, and that's just so if I don't end up using this whole bottle, I can just go ahead and put the cover on, it clips in. I mean, it's not going to be an airtight, I can't tip it upside down and throw it in the trunk of my car or anything, but at least it'll make it so nothing gets in, and I can store it on the shelf if I needed to. Okay. So, I just cut off up above that line, like I told you. Now, I'm going to go ahead and add. Sometimes these make funny noises, just so you know. You might think it's the camera guy. Oh, camera guy.

All right. We got the majority of that in there. I'm just going to keep trying to make sure I get in, I don't want to waste any of this fluid. We're going to continue adding. It's pretty likely this is going to take over three quarts, probably 3.1 or maybe even almost three and a half quarts by the time we're done. So, don't start thinking if you get in one, you're probably pretty close to full. We'll leave that there and grab some more. Quart number three. Looks like we've got a fair amount of fluid coming out. I would say that it's full at that point. I'm just going to grab my flashlight, take a peek. Yup. All right. It took a little less than I was expecting, just under three quarts. We'll clean up our fill plug, just to make sure that the seal's nice and clean. There we are. Bottom that out.

Now, we're going to torque these down to 27 foot pounds. We're going to make sure we torque both of these to 27 foot pounds. There we are. Go ahead and hit this one again. Definitely tight. Definitely tight. Tight, tight. We'll clean up our mess and we're clear to move along.

Okay, friends, so here we are. We've got our transfer case fill plug and the drain plug. We're going to remove the fill plug first, in case there's an issue we won't have it completely drained before or stuck with no fluid in our transfer case. Make sure we have our collection bucket, eye protection, hand protection, just in case any fluid comes out. Looks good. Here's our plug, 24 millimeter. We'll set this aside. Now we're clear to remove that drain. Fluid's going to come out, so I'll make sure you have your receptacle there. Same socket, 24 millimeter. Let's try to get off some of the crud. The fluid's going to come out. There we are. We'll let that finish draining out and then we'll move along.

I'm just going to clean this off, along in the threaded area, along where the gaskets going to ride or seal, whatever you want to call it. Just go along, make sure it's nice and clean and shiny. We don't have any big chunks of anything in there, debris. That looks good. Set that over it. This is going to be ready to go back in. Before that, we're going to come up here with our rag, and we'll just clean off around the drain hole. We'll put this in, and I'm going to bottom it out, and we'll torque it down after we fill it in and put in our fill plug. Okay. It's bottomed out. That's good enough for now. We're going to torque this at the same time as that. All right. Now, we're going to go ahead and fill this up. 75-90. Sometimes these bottles make some funny noises when you're filling, just so you know. Gets me every time. I'm just one of those guys.

Okay. That's quart number one. Let's grab some more. Quart number two going in. Should take a little less than a full quart here. All right, there we are. That's just over one quart. We'll let that come down to a slow trickle, and then we'll go ahead and plug it up. We've got our fill plug, nice and clean. Go ahead and put this in here. There we are. Just wipe this down so it stops dripping. Now we're going to torque both of these 27 foot pounds. There we are. Okay. I'm going to use my 24 millimeter socket. That's the fill. Here's the drain. I'm going to do it one more time, just real quick. It's definitely tight. Definitely tight. We'll clean this down the rest of the way, and we should be all done.

All right. This drain plug right here is a looking like it's been in there for quite a while. I'm going to do the fill plug as well. First thing we need to do is remove the fill plug. You want to do that first, just in case it doesn't want to come out. You don't have your fluid drained out with no way to fill it. So, I'll pull out that fill plug. That's what it looks like. I'm going to grab my drain bucket, collection receptacle. I'm going to use my Allen-head 10. I should have mentioned that to take out the fill plug. I'm going to use it for the drain plug, as well. I'll stick it in there. If it doesn't feel like it's going in very far, you can just go ahead and give it a couple of bonks with your hammer. I'm going to try to take it out. Came out a little easier than I was expecting, just like the upper there, so I guess I'm doing all right. Now, we'll just remove the plug completely into our receptacle.

Okay friends, just something that I wanted to show you real quick on the plugs on this. The drain plug has a magnet in the center. The fill plug does not. The reason why the drain plug has a magnet in the center is so that when your differential's turning and it's doing its job, in case a little flake of metal comes off from the gears and whatnot, it'll get caught on the magnet as the fluid gets circulated, and it won't keep circulating and get caught in between the gears. This is just going to collect any debris or metal pieces you might get. It's also a good indicator when the next time you do your change, if you have a lot of metal debris on there, not just the little shavings and whatnot, but large chunks, then you might know that you have a differential issue. This one was pretty good, so I'm not really worried about it. I just wanted to show you the plugs. Now we can move ahead to the next step.

We've got this down to a trickle. You can wait longer if you want to. It can take a couple of days, if you've got all that time. I'm just going to go ahead and put in this drain plug. I'm going to snug it up. There we are. I'm going to torque this in a minute. First, we're going to fill up our fluid. We'll put in that plug and then torque that one at the same time. All right, so now we're going to go ahead and try to fill it. If you're using the quart bottles, it can be quite the task, but it can be done, just do whatever you've got to do to get it lined up there. Do it, of course, over your recycling receptacle. Sometimes, these bottles make funny noises, just a heads-up when you're squeezing them. Let's see if I can get out as much of this fluid as possible into the differential. There we are. Okay. We're using 80-90 fluid in this. I'm going to grab another quart bottle real quick, and put in some more here.

For a differential, it should take approximately one and a half quart of 80-90 gear oil. They sell things that you can use to fill these much easier. I'm sure you can get one at 1AAuto.com. There we are. We're just going to let that continue until it's trickling, and then we'll insert the fill plug. All right. We've got our fill plug. It's nice and clean. We're just going to bottom it out. Okay. Let's torque these 27 foot pounds. Start at the fill, go to the drain. There we are. You can you hit them again. Tight, tight, good to go. Okay.

It's time to put up our shields. I just wanted to show you, you've got your little hook right here. That hook is going to go inside this hole. I have a couple of bolts in my hand. I have my 12 millimeter socket and an extension. The hook's holding up the rear of the plate. That's nice because it gives me an extra help for a holding up the skid plate. There we are. Get those started. We'll get a couple in the back there. Okay, we've got them all started. We can go ahead and tighten them up. Okay, 12 millimeter, I'm going to blast these in.

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