How to Replace Rear Tailgate Glass 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Lenny here at 1A Auto. Today, we're working on our 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser, and I want to show you how to remove the rear window hinge. It's going to be fairly easy. 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, so first thing we need to do is pop the glass. So, you just take your key inside the door lock here, turn it to the right, and hold it for a few seconds. There we are. Now we have a clear view of what's going on. We can move to the next step.

Next thing we're going to want to do is remove this plastic right here. There's going to be a little clip, right about here, and possibly one right about there. Essentially, there's two clips under here. It's going to feel like this piece is really stuck on there pretty good, but it'll pop off. You can use something like this, a little trim tool, that makes it better for you. Just kind of sneak it in there. There we are. Push clip, push clip. Those go right into these holes. We'll set this aside. We can move ahead to the next step.

Okay, so now let's start disconnecting our electrical connectors here. This right here is a push button. You can push in with your finger, and then just kind of grip it, pull it straight down. We always take a look at our electrical connectors, make sure there's no funny colors. Rainbow colors inside electrical connectors are no good. So, if you see green, blue, red, pretty much anything aside from metal, you're going to want to service that. This one looks great. I'll set it aside, get that out of the way. So here we are. We're going to push right on this, right here, and that's going to push in on this tab. If you notice, when you're pushing and that tab doesn't seem to move, just try to squeeze it together a little bit, then give it a try. That looks like it pushes down that tab a little bit more, and it separates real easy. Always take a look inside your electrical connectors. These look good. If you see any funny colors, make sure you service those. These look great. I'm going to set them aside. Let's move ahead to the next step.

So, this is for the washer fluid hose. Just going to grab it on both sides of the black. I'm going to try to separate right here. There we are. Make sure we didn't rip the hose. That looks great. This is still good. We'll set this stuff aside. If we bring it this way, we'll notice we have a clip right there. These are usually pretty hard to get out, so I like to use something like this. It's my little forky tool. Let's see if I can press it in there. Give it a little twist, pops right out. Okay? I'm going to come along, do the same thing there. Okay, cruising along. Let's grab this one. There we are. We'll set this aside.

So, here's our hinge. All right, we have this right here. This is an Allen head bold. It's a five millimeter. That holds on this plastic piece, okay? We'll come across. There's another one all the way down at the other end, five millimeter. We also have a 10 millimeter head nut right here, and another one located right there. So, let's start with the outer edge, and go with my five millimeter Allen head. That's what it looks like, by the way. So, there's the head of it. We'll set this aside, go over and do the other side. There we are, same as the first. We'll go put it over there with it. Now, I'm going to switch over to my 10 millimeter. I'm going to remove this nut, and that nut over there. At this point, our plastic's moving pretty freely up there. Here's our nut, by the way. It's got a nice rubbery seal on there, helps keep moisture out that could be trying to come in from the outside. Even though this is tucked up in the seal anyway, they put it on there. I'm going to leave it on.

Okay, for some reason I think the rubber's stuck on this one. I'll grab it real quick. Got my plastic trim tool here. There it is. Okay, so it was just the rubber stuck on there. We'll leave that on there. I'm going to bring this down a little bit, grab onto this. Okay, so now we've got just a little bit of tape here, a little bit of tape right here. Okay, so now we'll move along. We're just going to remove the tape that goes along the plastic, holding the defroster wires to it. Just like that, like that, and just come right across and do the whole thing. There's another one up there. Okay.

I'm going to bring this down carefully here. Bring it right down here and there we are. Easy peasy. All right, so right up here we're going to take off this. It's a 10 millimeter. There it is. It's still in decent condition, but we'll clean it up, get it back to good working order. Okay, so I'm going to take my nut. I'm just going to put it on here, just a few threads. There we are. It's not going anywhere. Now, when I go over to do the other side and the window starts coming loose, it's not going to be able to flop down on me. I'm holding the window, going to take off this nut. There we are. Take off this strong arm, put my nut down, work my way over holding the glass. There we are. We'll get this out of here. There we are. I'm trying to hold up my glass here. I've got my safety glasses on, of course. We'll grab our glass, bring it up and out. There we are, easy peasy.

Okay, when it comes time to replace your glass, it may or may not come with all the accessories here. You've got hardware. You've got your little latch right here. You're looking at Phillips head. This is where the handle is to lift your glass, Phillips head. Spots for your strong arm, Phillips heads. Everything, Phillips heads, Phillips heads, Phillips heads. Everybody gets a Phillips head. Anyway, I just wanted to show you, so if you have to replace those, maybe your glass came with it. Don't worry about it. If your glass didn't come with it, you have to replace it, well, don't worry about it either. Phillips heads. Okay? Easy peasy. Let's move ahead.

Okay, we're going to put our glass back up on here just like this. This one just down here. Oops. Okay, so I'm resting the glass on the outside of the hinge out there so it's kind of helping me hold this up so I can do it with one hand. There we are. You can try to put the strong arm on now, but it's just going to try to lift up on you, so I'm going to skip that part. Put it up on the top, try to get it going here. There we are. Get that one started on and go over to the other side and do the same thing. Okay, got both of these started. Now I'm going to go ahead and just slide my strong arm on here, get it locked in, make sure it can't come off. Go over and do the same thing to the other side. There we are. Okay. Let's move ahead to the next step.

All right, I'm just going to lower the glass down so I can see it. Okay. So now when we tighten this, we want to be very careful not to over tighten it, okay? I'm just going to ahead and bring it until it feels like it bottoms out. Okay. Just a teeny bit more. Got our rubber seal in there still. Do this side. Okay, bottomed. Just a teeny bit. Very nice. Let's move ahead to the next step.

So now it's time to go ahead and put on our trim piece here. I'm just going to go right up along the top and see if I can line it up. There it is. Okay, so we've got our nuts with our rubber gaskets on them. I'm just going to push the plastic down as we do this. Got my rubber gasket. Start that in there. I'm not going to tighten them down until I start those bolts as well. The reason why I didn't tighten it down is so I can move this around to line up the hole as needed. Sometimes it's not easy to get these started. There it is. Okay. That one's started. Getting these things started can be fun. It can be the biggest challenge of the day for something so simple as starting a bolt. There we are. Okay. So, they're all started now.

I'm going to start with the center and I'm going to snug these up. I don't want to go too tight, because I'm going to be compressing it up against the glass, so I want to put as minimal pressure on the glass as possible. Bring that down. There we go. I'm just going to snug this up until I feel as though it bottoms out. Grab my little washer fluid hose, bring that down. Okay, bottomed. Teeny bit. Come over here, do the same thing. Okay, bottomed. Teeny bit. Tight. Tight. Let's move ahead to the outer bolts.

Using my five millimeter again. Okay, bottom. Snug. Next, bottomed. Snug. Give it a nice little wiggle. Feels good. Let's just take a peek at it real quick. That looks pretty great. Okay, let's move along to the next step.

Okay, so now what we're going to do, I'm just going to get this up here and come right along here. Okay, this clip right here, it broke. I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to use a wire tie. Okay, come down along through here. I don't probably have to tell you how to use a wire tie, but I'm just going to bring it around, put it up and through and just get that so it can't flop around. I don't want it getting caught anywhere, you know, making it's way down in between the hinge or anything crazy like that. I want it to stay right up in that. Looks good there. We'll trim that off in one second. We'll keep moving here though. Get that in there. We have our wiring. I'm just going to tape this back, stick it with our little sticky tape that's there.

So, the washer nozzle comes underneath this little hooky-do there. So we're going to put it around that and right up in there. Okay. Grab this, third brake light pigtail, listen for the click, give it a nice gentle tug. That feels great. We'll grab this. We've got our lock right here, and then our lock slot there. Bring it in. Click. Give it a little tug. Feels good. Put that up in here. All right, let's trim that off, and we'll move ahead to the next step. Okay, we'll dispose of that properly.

Okay, so we've got our two holes and our two clips. Just put your fingers near the holes, so you know where to line them up with the clips, and then press. Presses right in. Push these up and out of the way so they can't get caught on anything. Let's give it a little test. Very nice. Easy peasy.

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