How to Replace Radiator Fan Clutch 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2007 Toyota FJ cruiser. I'm going to be replacing the fan clutch. It's going to be a very easy job. 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.

So now I'm going to remove the cover right here. I'm going to use a 10 millimeter. Set those aside. Let this up, pull it towards you, slides right off. We'll set this aside. Okay, next step, we're going to remove these little push clips. Something as simple as a small pocket screwdriver will do that. What you do is you lift up the center part that unlocks these ears and then you can slide it up. We'll set that aside. Do the same for all of these push clips. There we are. All the push clips. Grab this out of the way. We'll set it aside. All right. Get this off of here.

That gives us access to get to right here. Use a 10 millimeter. One bolt. Set this aside. Grab this one. Bolt number two. Same as number one. Set it aside. And our last bolt right over here. Continuing with our 10 millimeter. Number three. Same as the other two. Can't mix those up. We'll grab our reservoir. We'll set this aside.

We're just going to remove this hose. There we are. Set this aside. We're going to remove this clamp right here. Shake it around a little bit. Get it to break free. These pliers are great except getting the exact right size for things sometimes can be a pain. Slide it down the hose. You're going to grab your hose, give it a little wiggle. If it doesn't seem like it wants to break free... This one almost kind of looks like it will. Yup. It's coming off. Okay. We'll set that aside. Check your hose. Make sure you don't see any dry rot cracks in there when you squeeze it. So still looks decent. Set it aside.

Okay, so what we're going to do now, we're going to try to remove these nuts right here, okay? What I'm going to do first though is I'm just going to try to loosen them all up. Once I loosened them all up, I'm going to remove the serpentine belt. These right here are 12 millimeter nuts, so you just take your wrench while the belt is still on, set it on there, and just give it a little shake to break it free. If you go slow, it's just probably going to spin the pulley so you just got to really kind of jam onto it. Try to snap it free, okay? Like I said, you don't want to fully remove these nuts. If you fully remove the nuts, the pulley is going to be able to shift and it might throw the belt off, so keep that in mind.

Okay. You've got all four of those loose. Now we're going to go ahead and remove the serpentine belt and get that out of the way and we can continue. Okay. So to get to the tensioner pulley, which is located directly to the driver's side of the water pump pulley or the fan clutch pulley, I'm just going to go right here with your 14 millimeter socket and lift up on it. That relieves tension on the belt. Take the belt off of whichever pulley you can easily reach. For me, it was the power steering pump. We'll get our tool out of here. Okay.

So now we have no tension on this. We can go ahead and take out all four of these bolts, or nuts I mean. That's what they look like. We'll remove all these. We'll move on to the next step. Okay. Get our last nut off here. We'll set it aside with the other three. Now we can grab our assembly, pull it right off. Here we are. We'll set the fan aside. Here it is. Cool. Now we'll move onto the next step.

Okay. We'll just remove this right here. That makes it so these hoses will come off of the fan shroud. There we are. Now those won't be holding this up. We're going to remove a 10 millimeter right here. That's what it looks like. We'll set this aside. Okay. We're going to remove the 10 millimeter on the other side of the engine or the other side of the radiator. There it is. Same as the first. I'll put both of those together. Be easy to remember how they go together.

We can grab our fan shroud and our fan assembly. We're going to pull them both up at the same time. Pull our fan assembly out and here we are. There's our fan assembly. Okay, so it's time to separate the fan itself from the clutch assembly. To do that, there's a 10, 10, 10, and 10, four 10 millimeters. I have it up against the vice right here. That's just to keep it secure from me. You can hold that against whatever you need to, but essentially you just need to hold it still, put your 10 on there, give it a loving bonk. Here we are and do the same thing over here. Last nut. Here we are. Okay. I'm just going to take the two, shake 'em around, separate them. Easy peasy.

All right, so now it's time to install our brand new quality 1A Auto blades onto the fan clutch. We've got it over. You want to make sure that you've got this going the right way. It's easy to think that it goes the other way, meaning this way. It doesn't. Okay? It goes just like this. Now you've got to reach down inside to be able to put the nuts on. Four 10 millimeter nuts. Just start them all on. Cool. We're going to bottom all four of them out. Go crisscross. Bottom.

Okay. They're all bottomed out. Now I'm just going to go back through and I'm going to snug them all up. Feels pretty good. Good, good. Last one. All four are tight. We're clear to install. Okay. It's time to install our cooling shroud and fan. I'm just going to get the shroud so it's down in waiting for me. I'll get my fan lined up. Let's see. I'm going to try to pull it away so you can hopefully see a little bit. Get that down in there. There we are. Okay. I've got four of these nuts right up here, so I'm just going to... I'll get them started on. We'll tighten them down in a minute. That's one. I'm going to use my ratchet with my 14 millimeter. I'm going to maneuver the tensioner so it releases tension on the belt, gives me more slack essentially, and I can put my belt over all my pulleys.

I'm just going to get my ratchet out of here. Before I go any further, I'm just going to double check to make sure the belt's on all my pulleys. Beautiful. Okay. Keep going with my double checking here. All right. At this point, without starting up the vehicle, it looks as though I am on all my pulleys. We'll double check it again after we have a chance to start the vehicle. We can move ahead to the next step.

Okay. Using our same 14 millimeter socket and ratchet that we were using, we're going to go back on the tensioner. We're going to apply opposite pressure. I'm pushing down at this point. That's applying pressure to the belt and it's going to prevent this pulley from spinning while I tighten up these nuts. Nice and tight. All right. That's nice and tight. This one, nice and tight. There we are. All four are nice and tight. We can move along to the next step.

Okay. It's time to get this lined up at the bottom right down here. Yeah have a little hooky do that comes off the radiator, comes like this, and then the shroud slides down in it like that, okay? So you need to try and get the bottom pressed up against the radiator and then slide it down into it's little groove down there. Once it seems like it's in, you can just go ahead and give it a little bonk. Just like that. Little loving bonk makes the world go around. Over here. Here we are. Okay.

Inside with the radiator, you got these little square nuts here. They just go right inside these slots. I'm going to go right up in the top just like that. It slides right in the side and that just makes it so the bolt has something to go into. I'll do the same on the other side. Okay. Got one of our bolts started in there. We'll leave it loose for the second till I start this one. Here we are. Once it feels like it bottoms out, like that, I'm just going to give it a teeny bit more. Give it a wiggle. It feels good. Do the same thing over here.

You don't want to apply too much pressure on these because the... Well the radiator's plastic, right? Okay. Bottomed out. A little more. Give her a nice wiggle. The bottom doesn't separate from the radiator. That means we did a good job getting the fan shroud into the little hooky dos down there. On this side over here, we have that little clamp or clip that held the hoses. So I'm just going to go like that. See if I can get it to plug in there. Here we are. That just makes it so they can't wobble around, go too far, cause an issue. Let's move along to the next step.

Okay, so we've got our little push clips here. You just want to take it while they're open or the center's lifted out, push in the outer ring and then push in the center. Okay. You can start from the center. You can start from one side. You do you, boo-boo. I'm going to put that one there. I'll find it later. Grab that. See if I can push through the center. Some of these are in pretty poor condition. Maybe I'll get some and replace those. You can watch the video on that. There we are. Those are all in. Can move ahead to the next step.

Okay. I'm going to grab this clamp with my pliers hopefully. Here we are. Slide the hose over the radiator. Trying to get my pliers on there. There we go. Bring this over. Give it a nice little tug. It's going nowhere. Can move ahead to the next step.

So here we go. We're going to install our coolant reservoir. Just line up the holes. We've got our three bolts. I'm going to start them all in before I go ahead and tighten any of them down. There we are. We'll tighten these down. Okay. Start with the hardest one to get to because why not? Feels like it's getting close. Okay. Bottomed. Teeny bit. There we go. I'm just going to grab the other two. Bottomed. There it is. Let's move to the next step.

Time to install this. This hose lines up with this, slides right on there. That's going to close right up. Of course we're going to fill it first, but just to show you clips on there. Easy peasy. Okay. It's time to install our engine cover. We've got two little hooky dos like this. One's going to go here, one's going to go there. This is going to set flat down and then we've got a little piton there. One there. Going to go in there. Line them up, bring it down, line up the studs with the holes. We've got two nuts. Tight. Tight. Looking good.

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