How to Remove Washer Fluid Level Sensor 2006-12 Nissan Altima

Hey friends, it's Len at 1A Auto. Today I'm going to be working on a 2010 Nissan Altima. I'm going to show you how to remove and replace the washer fluid level sensor. It's going to be a very simple job and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts, you can always come down to 1A Auto and check us out. Thanks for checking in.

All right, we're going to start removing this bumper cover. It's going to be very simply. I'm going to guide you through it. We're going to start on the top since we're already still on the ground. We're going to remove a couple of these pins right here, here, here, here, here and here. And then we'll continue onto the next steps. You'll a couple basic tools. You might need all or any of these tools but here we go. Start with the little forky looking one. Stick it under here, pry it up, we'll put it someplace safe where we won't lose it. Continue on along the line. Sometimes these might break, it happens. You can replace it if you want. We'll find that later.

Move along here, I'm just going to pry up on this a little bit and I can use my fork again. I'm just going to pop it up. These right here are called push clips so what happens is, the center pulls up and it disengages the lock. When you go to put this back in, you push the bottom in first, plug the hole and then you shove this in and it spreads this and locks it in. Put that aside so we don't lose it. We're going to continue down the line. Just get it started. Use our little fork device here, lift up on that pushpin. We're going to continue along, see if we can get under it and onto the next. Just give it a little tug, make sure that we got them all out, it's possible to miss one, it happens. It's human nature to make mistakes. I think we're good to move onto the next step which would be raising the vehicle up a little bit so we can get a look at what's underneath, see what else is holding it on.

One thing that I did want to mention, even though we just finished taking all these out, we'll just put one more in real quick. We'll leave it in there until we've got everything else unattached so when we're underneath the vehicle, we don't have to worry about it coming down and hurting us.

I like to take note that there is a mounting bolt for the bumper cover right under here. It's a simple 10 millimeter head. You can use a ratchet and socket if you want or a ratchet wrench, whatever you're into, 10 millimeter. We can go ahead and turn that counterclockwise to reverse it out. Once we get this completely out, we'll go over to the other side of vehicle and we'll remove that one the same way. Here's what it looks like. We'll put that safely aside so we don't lose it. And off we go.

Next, we're going to go ahead and remove our seven millimeter head bolts right here. They come across. They'll come across here if the rest of the splash shield was here. Can use a ratchet or if you happen to have a little electric gun, that would work as well. Once we get all these off, we can go ahead and remove the push clips. Get this right out of the way and then we can get going on removing the rest of this bumper. You can put a little downward force on it if you want. Making sure we're wearing safety glasses in case anything comes falling down. There we are. Something fell down. Now we're clear to start removing these push clips, same as the top. Just pull out the top end of it and then the bottom should come out as well. Use our screwdrivers that we were using before. I'm going to find the little divot, I'm going to get it pried up a little bit so we can grab it with our other tool there.

We can continue with our little hook tool if we want or we can go ahead and use some cutters. Might find it easier to just grab onto it with some cutters and pull it out. Grab on, you don't need to squeeze too hard, we're not trying to cut it, just break it free. Making sure you hold the splash shield so it doesn't fall down and hit you in the face. We're going to do the same for the other one. Come over and grab it with our cutters, nice and light, break it free. It separated, that's okay. It's going to pull down. Now we're clear to put these back together and we'll set them aside so we don't lose them.

Now we're going to take our Philips head screwdriver or whatever you might have but it's Philips head on this. We're going to reverse all these bolts out or screws. It's going to come right along here. We don't need to worry about those but right here, right here, right here. And then it should come free and we'll go back up to and we'll dislodge it and it should come right off. Last one. These removed. We're just going to give it a little shake. We don't want to take it completely off. All right, now we're clear to get back up to the top, we'll take out that one last pin that showed you leaving in and this should come right off.

We're back up to to our last pin that we pressed in there. We're going to do it just like we did before and break it free. Out like that. At this point, once we get this out, the bumper cover might come loose so you want to make sure you have it secured. Just get this up and out, we'll put it over here. Grab onto it. Should come free. Now we've successfully removed our bumper cover.

All right, so to do any service to the reservoir system for the washer fluid system, we're going to have to drain the fluid so we're going to make sure we're wearing safety glasses in case anything comes out. Make sure we also have a catch basin, catch as much of this fluid as we can. We don't want it getting on the ground. I'm just going to try to push this little pin right here and if it doesn't seem like it wants to push, you can come under, just lift this up, take a peek in there, make sure there's no funny colors. Looks good.

Now I'm going to go ahead and take my same screwdriver, whatever you might happen to have, pry bar and go ahead and wiggle this a little bit. It's going to be a little bit of a fighter. Might need to twist a little bit to come out. Once you get it past there, you should be able to get it twisting. Fluid's going to want to come out so we're going to make sure we have our bucket ready. This should just want to pop right out. There's just a little rubber seal in there. Here it comes. I'm going to try to keep it controlled. Fluid of course would be full. If you had a clean container that you wanted to catch this in, you can do that and reuse it.

We got our level sensor out. We can inspect it real quick. Looks like it's pretty good. Terminal ends are good that side. Going to take a look at the little wiring harness make sure there's no funny colors. That looks good to me. No blues, browns, anything. Here's the seal for the level sensor. You can grab that with your finger. If you can't get it out with your finger, you can use a small screwdriver or whatever you've got. Just check it for cracks, dry rot, swelling. This looks like it's in great condition. If you happen to see something like that, you probably want to replace this, otherwise you'll have a leak.

We're going to go ahead and install this. Just presses in nice and easy. We'll grab our level sensor. You can tell which way it goes because there's a flat line here, flat line there. You can't put it in upside down. If you did, it wouldn't work right anyway. Basically what happens is, is when the fluid's full, this is up. When the fluid gets low and empty, this goes up or down and then the light turns on up on your dash to say, add some fluid.

We're going to go ahead and reinstall this making sure we have the flat side up, matches up. We can't mess that up. We're just going to press it right in. Should pop in fairly easily, just like that. I'm going to take our harness, push it right down, clips right in. Now we've successfully reinstalled our level sensor.

All right, now it's time to install our bumper cover. We're going to be careful not to rub up against our fenders with it unless you don't care about your paint. I'm going to try hard though. See if we can get it settled in nice and easy. Get that down along there. I'll worry about pressing it in in a minute. Just going to get it lined up along the top here. We're going to get this lined up. We want to try to get this hole lined up under there. This one with there, this one there and so on. If you need to, you can use a little bit of your body force.

We have two different types of clips here. We have regular push clips and then the locking push clips. You can count them. There's two that are locking, four that are regular. They're different sizes. This right here is much wider than the other one so they go in the bigger holes. I'm going to put the two, was one right here and the second one right here. These are the two bigger holes. If you wanted to, you can latch them down. Not going to worry about it yet. I'm going to try to get these lined up. Just give it a little push. That locked in. Come on over. The next one. Should just press in hopefully. Sometimes it's hard getting things lined up. There it is. Come along, we got two more, two more holes. That's nice. See if I can get it in. If you needed to you could use maybe a small hammer or whatever you got if you don't have the thumb strength for it. That's okay.

All right, we got all these, now I can go ahead and lock these down simply by pushing in the centers. Can line up the bumper along the headlights. Might do a little bit of fanangling here. I'm going to try to get it right along the seam of the fender. There's a little lip under there that's black. See if we can get it popped in. Looks like we need to give it a little bit of a tug to pull it. There we go. Some brute force. We'll do the same thing for the other side and then we'll be clear to lift this up and we can put in our two screws and then go along the bottom and fill those in as well.

All right, we have our little hidden screw holes here. We got our, see if I can get it off, get our screw. 10 millimeter bolt head, in case we don't remember, that's okay. Just going to try to get it lined up. We are only screwing into plastic. Anytime you hear that, just remember you don't have to go super tight, it's just to secure it in. That feels pretty good. We can go ahead and push this up in here and then we're just going to go onto the other side. We'll finish up with the bumper skirt, should be all set.

Here we go. We're going to grab this plastic. It's going to go underneath the plastic of your bumper or bumper cover, I guess. Your bumper would be the metal part. Get that lined up. If these things look like they're misaligned with the holes, they just move fairly easily. And we can line them up. Take a peek. Course the first one that I put in move a little bit, that's okay. Like I said, they move fairly easily. That looks good now. Okay. Take our three Philips heads on our screwdriver. We're just screwing into plastic so you don't have to go hard, like I keep saying. Just get these in. Down the line. There we are. Now we'll do the same on the other side and we can move on.

We have our splash shield. Let's say for some reason, maybe you lost the clips that go up here, you lost the pushpins or even you just didn't have any and you just need to replace them. You don't have any replacements. What we could do is use a couple zip ties. The way we're going to do that, if you access to something like this, you can go ahead and make a hole, something like that. You can use a drill bit if you wanted to do that. You could use anything that you wanted to use and make a hole really. Very carefully use a pocket knife. For me, I'm just going to go ahead and use this. I got it nice and hot. I'm going to go like this, just rest it on there. Melt myself a nice little hole. There's one. You don't want to breathe in these fumes. I'm sure it's known that the state of California cause cancer. There we are. Now we've got hole. Go ahead and turn this off, let it finish doing what it's doing. Smoke clouds.

Now we can go ahead and match this up. Bring it up here. Looks fairly good. We can use our zip ties. It's going to be hard getting the first one started. Going to be flopping around. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to get it started down here. Go through, and I'm going to bring it back through. If you wanted to, you could use bigger zip ties, something a little stronger might be better. For what I'm doing, I'm just going to do this. Let's see, let's go this way. That makes more sense, doesn't it. Bring it through. Just get it started. We don't need to tighten it up yet. Now we can just let this hang down. We can grab our other zip ties, continue on.

I'm going to leave them loose until we get in our pushpins. Get it lined up with the hole. Push it right in. Get our last one. See if we can get it up in there. Take our center pushpin, lock it up in. There we go. Now we can go ahead and tighten these down. Just go down the line. Can leave them down if you like that. Trim them off if you don't. Kind of looks like a neat little thing. There we go.

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