How to Replace Idler Pulley 2007-09 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1AAuto. Today we're working on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser and I'm going to be replacing the idler pulley. It's going to be very simple and I want to show you how to do it. If you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay now remove both these skid plates, using my 12 millimeter. You can use a ratchet, you can use an air gun, whatever you have access to. Obviously the air guns a little bit quicker. There's four bolts so I got three of them. I'm going to have one left here so that means the skid plates going to be ready to come down so I'm going to get ready to hold that as soon as I get this on.

There we are. Grab the skid plate. Get that out of the way. We'll set it aside. So we'll do the forward skid plate now. There should be four bolts in this as well. One here, one there. One should be there, it's imaginary, one there also imaginary. On the front of this it has little hooks that go into the frame. Right here is one. Then the other one's right here. So, what you would do is you would start with the forward ones, take those out, and then you work your way to these. Once you remove these, the skid plate could come down this way towards you or towards the front. So you want to be careful for your face but the hooks are going to make it so it can't completely fall straight down.

Bring it down and then slide it out towards the front of the vehicle. It should want to slide right out here. Just get this there. There it is. So, here's the hooks I was talking about and they just go right up inside here. Okay, so here we go. We're going to use our 14 millimeter. We're going to go right to the tensioner right there and we're going to turn this counter-clockwise. That's going to relieve tension from the belt so we can slide it off. I'm just going to come over to this idler pulley. There we are. There let me get it off of the power steering pump too. That's going to give us plenty of slack. There we go. Get the ratchet out of here.

Let's move ahead to the next step. All right. So, here's the idler pulley, the one we're going to be replacing. This is on the passenger side bank. There are actually three idler pulleys on this vehicle. There's this one right here which is bad on this particular vehicle, there's one right here, and then there's one up the top there up above the tensioner, three. But we're just going to replace one but they're all pretty much the same to replace. You just take a 14 millimeter, turn the bolt to the left there. There we are. I'll just take this off of here. Off we go. Let's move to the next step.

So, here is our old, here's our new, just match them up real quick make sure they're approximately the same. It looks good. We'll put this aside so we can recycle it. Grab our bolt with a washer, put it right on there. Bring it up here. Start the bolt into the engine. Almost. There we are. I'm going to grab my torque wrench and we'll torque that up. I'm going to torque this bolt with a 14 millimeter to 28 inch pounds, which is not very much. There we are. Easy peasy. Let's move ahead. So, I've got my 14 millimeter and my ratchet up on top of the tensioner. I'm going to turn it counterclockwise and that's going to relieve pressure. The same way we took off the belt we're going to do the same thing here. So, now I'm just going to go as far as I can with the tensioner, slide it over my power steering, slowly let it back.

I'm going to leave that on there for a second. I'm just going to feel around. It's definitely completely on the power steering. This is a smooth pulley so you don't have to worry too much about that, smooth pulley for the tensioner, and back around. It goes up over this. That feels good around the water pump up around the alternators good, AC compressor is good, the cranks good. Cool. It's time to get this skid plate back up. We've got a little hook right there, that's going to go right in this hole right here. What that's going to do to make it so if you had to you could let go. All right. And or you can hold towards the front and you don't have to worry about holding up the whole way to the skid plate.

So, I'm just going to take my bolts for the forward end of it, get started in the hole there. I'm not going to tighten it down until I get all four started. All right. Nice and easy here. Come around, see if I can see up there. Get this one. Perfect. Let's move ahead.

All right. So. We've got our forward skid plate. We've got our little hooks on the skid plate. They go right up inside the slots. You've got two hooks, you've got two slots. So, let's bring it so it's straight up and down, line the hooks up with the slots. Now at this point you can release the front assuming you have both hooks there and you can move along to the back where we can get this in and situated. All right. It should lined to go up in there. Here we go, that one's started. There we go. I'm just going to blast them up in there. Theoretically, most of these skid plates have four. They have two up here too so if you have those two up there you're going to want to make sure you start those before you tighten these. There we go, tight, tight. Very nice.

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