How to Replace Radiator 2006-11 Honda Civic

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

Open up the hood. Pull the release. There are two spots you can put the prop rod. There's one here. That's sort of the normal one if you need to work on the engine, you don't want to be hitting your head. You can actually lift the hood up further and push the prop rod down into this opening here. It puts the hood almost vertically. Leaves a lot more space to work.

You want to remove this front cover. It's got some clips in here. I'm going to use a trim clip tool. Pop that push clip out. Do that the same for the other side. These are little push clips. Use a small flat bladed screwdriver to open up the middle. Just pop it out. That unlocks it, then you just pull it out. Same for this one. This plastic will come out from behind the grille. Might have to move these over a little bit. It just slides out like that. Do the same over here. Once that lip is out of the chrome grille, you can kind of take this and fold it a little bit. Slide it off of the hood latch. You want to put that aside.

You'll have to raise and support the vehicle so you can at least get to the drain at the front of the vehicle. At minimum, you'll want to raise the front, but we're going to use our two post lift. Radiator drain is located right here. There's a nice opening in this plastic shield. If this is too tight to take off with your fingers, use a pair of pliers to loosen it. Just make sure that when you loosen it, you've got your drain pan or bucket ready because it will come pouring out.

I'm just going to get it free with my pliers. I can just take it off with my hand. And if you go up top and you open the radiator cap, it will drain even faster. With this drained, I will reinstall the plug. Don't forget to do this before you refill the radiator with coolant. Get it threaded in place. Just use your hand to tighten it because you don't want to over tighten it. That feels good there. Wipe up any coolant.

I'm going to unplug the harness for the cooling fans, both AC and radiator. There's one on this side. Push in the lock tab. Pull that out. Once you disconnect this connector, the harness is clipped in the top of the fan shroud. It's got a little plastic push clip. It's kind of hard to see because it's underneath, but you can push the little tabs in with needle nose pliers. That way you can reuse this clip and not break it. So you push the tabs in, or squeeze them in, and then pull it up.

What I'm doing is I'm taking needle nose pliers and I'm squeezing these two tabs together, and that's letting me pull it out of this little mounting hole. If that bends, don't worry about it. It's thin sheet metal. You can bend it right back. This harness runs along the top of the radiator support. Undo this plug here, and then unclip it down here by pulling up on this tab and sliding it off. This goes to the hood latch. Put that up over there. Going to use some trim clip pliers to pop this clip out. Holding on the harness. Pop that one out. If you can't get to the back side of them, just squeeze the release tabs.

We're going to remove the battery. These battery hold down, they're long bolts. I can just slide this harness off of this one. They look pretty rusty. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant on them before I try to move them. I'll let that sit. Now I can start by disconnecting the negative terminal is 10 millimeter on this one. Just loosen it up. It doesn't take much. Just put that aside, and this terminal here doesn't look factory. It could be a 10 millimeter on your car. This one looks like it's been switched to a 12mm. Going to loosen this up. Then just wiggle it free. Put the harness aside. Can work on getting this bracket out.

I'm going to use a 10 millimeter deep socket and a ratchet, and just remove these two. You don't even have to thread these all the way off. Once you get them loose enough, they are sort of hooked in at the bottom and you can unhook them. They've got this hook. Once you've got one unhooked, you can unhook the other. Be careful. As you're doing this, don't touch any metal between these two terminals because they are live. You'll short it out, but you don't have to thread the nut all the way off of these because that will take forever. Just get them loose enough and unhook them. With the battery tie down removed, we can take the battery right out of the car. It's got those plastic cover on it. I'm just going to pull it off so it's easier to grab. Now I can reach in with my hands and grab it. This battery is pretty small. Just put that aside.

Disconnect this electrical connector here. Pushing in on the lock, pulling it out. These can kind of get stuck sometimes. Sometimes you might have to push it in first, and then squeeze it and pull it out. Just got to work it back and forth. It's also clipped into the shroud. You need to take a clip tool, clip removal tool, put it in here, and kind of pop it out. Sometimes these break. It's not a big deal. When we're all said and done, those are tied back in place if need be. You can push that aside.

This harness is all together here. I'm going to pop this hose out. Then I can actually take it off this neck here. Use these to kind of help me pry it off. Put that aside. This is the filler neck for the radiator. It's bolted to the upper radiator support. I need to unbolt it so I can push it aside, and that way when we unbolt the radiator support, I can lift it off and this will stay with the radiator. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant in here underneath, and try to get those bolts. Use a 10 millimeter socket and ratchet. Work those in and out a little bit. Work the rust penetrant into the threads. I will be able to push this aside.

There are two T30 Torx bolts holding on the top of the bumper. They are bolted into the upper radiator support, so I need to remove them. There's also a 10 millimeter bolt behind them I need to get to. Once these are removed, I can kind of flex the bumper and get to the bolts behind it, and also let me this piece off. Just using a T30 Torx bolt, T30 Torx socket and a ratchet. Once those are loose, I have enough space. I can move that. So that will flop forward for us.

I'm going to loosen these bolts that hold on the bracket for the condenser for the AC. Looks like these are slotted, but I think I'm going to have to take the whole bolt out because I don't think there's enough room for this bracket to move. Plus, I don't want to damage the AC condenser, causing leaks. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant on the screw. I can feel the back side of the screw here, so I'm going to spray some in the back side. Using a 10 millimeter ratcheting wrench, remove this bolt. Once I get it loose enough, I'll take it out with my fingers. I'll repeat that for the other side.

I'm going to remove the two 10 millimeter bolts that are on the radiator top brackets. I can probably leave these in and just lift this support out, but having these removed will make it a little bit easier. Spray some rust penetrant in there on both of them. Pull that right out of the way. Repeat that for the other side. There's three bolts. One here, one here, one here on both sides of the radiator support. The top one, the front one, and then the back one. Those need to come out, and then we can lift this radiator support up and lay it aside. I'm going to use a 10 millimeter socket to break these free. Clearance on this one is a little tighter. I'm going to use the ratcheting wrench. All right. With those bolts removed, I should be able to lift this up.

I removed these two harness clips. One is on the upper radiator support. One is one the side of the car, and then you can have the harness free. All right. Now I've got this harness free. I'm going to lift this straight up, and carefully because it's still attached to the harness. And we're just going to lay it right here. There's one final electrical connector on the bottom of the radiator. You need to unclip that, and then unclip the harness from the radiator before you can remove the radiator.

To remove the radiator from the car, I'm going to have to separate the upper radiator hose. You could either take it off of the radiator or the engine block. I think it's easier to do it here because we can take it off here, and then do the lower one right here, and lift the whole radiator out as an assembly and switch the radiator hoses out afterwards. I'm going to take some slip joint pliers. Squeeze this clamp together. If you get it just right, it will lock in place. Slide it back down. This hose might be stuck on the neck. I'm going to take a pick, and just work the pick around the hose, sliding it between the neck and the hose to try to break the seal. Just going to grab the hose and just kind of work it back and forth. It's coming free now. Pull it off. Leave it up there.

You can remove this clamp here. Again, use the slip joint pliers. Squeeze it together. Try to maneuver it in a way that they will lock. Just slide it down the hose if you don't get it locked. Again, take that pick. Slide it between the hose and the neck. Sort of work it side to side. Just trying to break the seal. Seal broken. You've got to pull the hose off. All right. With those free, there shouldn't be anything else holding the radiator in the car. I'm just going to bend the hose over here carefully. This should lift straight out of the car with the fans attached. It still might have some coolant in it, so I've got a drain bucket handy, and I'm just going to try to get some of the coolant out before I start handling this radiator.

If you plan on reusing your cooling fans, you're going to have to remove them from your old radiator. These are 10 millimeter bolts here, and the two pins here at the bottom of the radiator. I'm going to remove the 10 millimeter bolts, and this one should just lift up and out of the radiator. You can put that aside and reuse it if you like.

I'm going to remove the cooling fan. Again, there's two 10 millimeter bolts in the top. I'm going to remove those. This is also sitting on two pins. I'm going to lift it up and out of the pins, and then just kind of ... with it out of the car, you just lift it straight up and out. And if you're going to reuse that, you can put that aside. You need to remove this little filler neck and hose because we're going to reuse it on our new radiator.

I'm going to take some slip joint pliers and just loosen this clamp. Put it up here. This clamp you'll leave together. We don't need to touch that. We take our pick. We're just going to go underneath the hose, just around the neck of the radiator just to kind of free it up. Slide that right off. Put it aside so we can reuse it. With this one out of the way, I can get to this clamp better. I'm going to use the same thing, clip joint pliers. Squeeze it together, and then it will be able to lock, which is great. You can actually take the two of these off for now. Again, take our pick. Go underneath it. Work it around the plastic to break the seal. Just work that off.

These hoses are in good shape, so we're going to reuse them. This bottom hose, there's a clamp here, but we don't have to touch that clamp. That clamp would be if we wanted to change the hose. This hose is in okay shape, so we're not going to change it. We're going to reuse it. It's got a quite disconnect here. You want to take a flat bladed screwdriver and push the lock out just like that. It will come out and hit these stops, and then wiggle it back and forth to free it. Make sure that stays out.

To reuse this quick disconnect coupler, it's got a pretty strong O-ring in there, and it's almost like it's suctioned on there. You want the lock removed. This looks pretty awful. I'm going to use this big pry bar and slide it under the corner. There's a corner like this on either side, and then I'm going to pry it up very carefully. Since we're not reusing this radiator, I'm not concerned about breaking it, but it doesn't look great when I do this. Do it from the other side. That actually came free. I need to swap this temp sensor over. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter box wrench to remove it. Spin that out. Swap it over to our new radiator.

Here's our old radiator from our vehicle. It's starting to leak a little bit there. Here's our brand new one from 1AAuto.com. It comes as a bare radiator. We'll have to swap over all the hoses and stuff that we took off. It's the same size. It has the same type mounts, the drain, our radiator hose is in the same position. It's got all the same mounting holes for the fans, and of course the same upper radiator hose hook ups. It came with caps to keep stuff from getting in there during shipping, so you can just pull these caps off.

We're also going to install the temp sensor down here, so we have to remove this plug. This would work great for you and fit right in the vehicle. We're going to reinstall this quick connect. I removed the spring clip from it, so I'm going to put it back on. Get this in place so that's in the open position. It's keyed over the new one. Push it down. It sits nice and tight with that O-ring. Push it in. That locks it in place. It can't come off.

Now we can install the temperature sensor. It just goes down here. I'm going to use the 17 millimeter wrench to tighten it down. You just want to squish down that O-ring a bit. You don't want to go too tight and break it. Right there feels good. Knock a little of this rust off. There's just some scale from the clamp. I'm going to slide this hose back into place. It goes about there. Hose to clamp down. I'll face it down in case we need to change it, I can get to it. Take your slip joint pliers. Take a flat bladed screwdriver. Get the clamp where I want it. Push it down like this. Pop it off the locks. That snaps it right into place.

Now, reinstall the upper radiator hose. Put the clamp back on. Slide this down over, clamp back in the same position. Flat bladed screw driver. Snap that into place.

Reinstall the filler neck. Pair of slip joint pliers, just clamp down into place. Perfect. You can install your old fans if they're working fine. Installation will be the same whether you're using the old fans or brand new ones.

To reinstall the radiator, these rubber mounts need to go on the corresponding rubber. Need to go on the corresponding openings in the bottom of the radiator support. Lift the radiator up. Slide it straight down in place. I need to move the bumper. Move the condenser out of the way a little bit. These will push down into place. Now hook up the water radiator hose. Push it right back up onto the goose neck. Take some slip joint pliers. Grab the clamp. Try to line it up where it was before.

Put the upper radiator hose on. Put the clamp back. I actually managed to get it into the locks, so it's in the free position. Slide it back to where it belongs. We're going to hold it where it needs to be, then you take the screwdriver. Aim from this side, and you kind of wedge a flat bladed screwdriver in there. Pop it up and it locks into place. Don't forget to reconnect the temp sensor that's on the bottom of the radiator.

We've actually just popped this clip out and pulled it down. You could do this from the top or just by reaching up in there. We've just got this moved down so you can see what we're doing. Over you. I'm going to reach up and clip this into place. It's keyed, so it can only go on one way. It will click when it's locked in place. Then, just pop the harness back into the little hole there. Put the upper radiator support back in place. May have to kind of flip it around. We have to push this filler neck down.

Start on this side. It might get caught on this bracket that's holding the AC condensers. Just pull that aside. It's caught over here. Move that out of the way. That's where it needs to be. Right now, I'm going to catch this bolt here. You can tell the bolts that came out of here because it will be painted body color. Just catch one on each side for now. I'm going to go and reconnect these electrical harnesses. This little clip broke here, and this one broke here. This one's still good, just going to kind of squeeze it back together.

Push that up. There's a hole underneath. Clip this fan. Don't forget to clip these fans back in because if they don't turn on when the car is running, it will overheat. That harness is fine. It's not going to go anywhere. Locate your coolant overflow hose. That goes on here. I'm going to lift this up and over. Put that into place. This clips into there, but first I'm going to clip it here on the bottle. Kind of put it in place. Clip this up here. Get these bolts started, and reconnect the condenser fan loader. Put this connector in. Put the harness back in. Disconnect that.

Reinstall the upper radiator mounts. That rubber part goes over the pin. There's an alignment tab. That goes right there. I'll reinstall the bolts. Kind of get everything set into position. Do the same for the other side. We'll come back and tighten everything. To reattach the condenser bolts, I just lift up the bumper. These are the long bolts that go through these rubber grommets. Make sure they're lined up. Okay. Do the same for the other one. All right.

Once those are started, take a ratcheting wrench and tighten them down. When they feel a bit tight, I'll stop. Do the same for the other side. Tighten up the radiator mount bolts. Do the same for the other side. Got our upper bolts on the radiator support just in there kind of loose because I want to be able to move this around and adjust it a bit. You can kind of see where the paint's missing. When these bolts are installed, they're painted in place. That one looks lined up pretty well. I'll get that one installed. Then, install the one on the back side. Do the same over here. Get it lined up well. Install the bolt. Then install the one on the back.

I'm just going to slide it over a little bit. That looks pretty good. It don't have to be super exact, but it helps. Once I get this tight, I will stop. I will do the same for all the other bolts. Tighten these bolts that are holding on the radiator filler neck. Narrow it down pretty evenly.

Reinstall these Torx head bolts that are holding on the bumper. These don't need to be very tight. You don't want to crack the bumper or strip these bolts. I'm just going to bring it down. That's just fine.

Reinstall these here. Reinstall the plastic shield that goes on the top. I'm going to start by going over the hood latch. Kind of flex it if need be. Pick this up. Pick this one up over here. Slide it underneath. That also needs to go under the fender. This is pretty flexible. You can push it around. Same thing on that side. Pop that under. This lip goes under the chrome, so you've got to go backwards first. Just kind of push it back and get it underneath the chrome. These go in both sides. Push that in place. Same with the other side. These two push clips will go in here.

Place our plastic battery tray back in place. Reinstall the battery. Make sure the wires are out of the way. Reinstall the plastic cover. This wide opening goes towards the front. Put that in place. Battery tie downs. Get them hooked. Tighten those down. Going to reinstall the positive terminal. That actually goes over that. Put that down there. This one is a 12 millimeter. Remember when you're tightening this one, just make sure you don't touch the end of the wrench to ground because this is the live terminal. A couple turns to make sure it's tight. Then I reconnect the negative on this one, it happens to use a 10 millimeter.

Tighten that up, and there you go. We've got a special radiator funnel set up. This will help us fill and bleed the system. We're going to fill it with a 50/50 mix of the appropriate coolant. Got this topped off. Now I've just kind of gone in and just squeeze the upper and lower radiator hoses a little bit. Gets any real big air bubbles out of there. I'm going to start it and run it. Left the thermostat open and we should see any bubbles that are remaining in the system bubble out of the funnel.

You can see as the engine's running and the air bubbles in the cooling system are starting to escape. When it comes up to temperature and the thermostat opens, we should see a lot more air bubbles come out. So our system is bled. The lower hose is warm, so the thermostat is open. I'm going to shut the car off. This coolant's really hot. I'm going to put our little plug in here. We can take our funnel out. I'll actually take the extra because our reservoir is a little empty.

Put that in here. You don't want to overfill it. Just fill it to the high mark. Remove the rest of our funnel. Coolant's right at the top of the radiator, which is perfect. Reinstall the radiator cap. Wipe up any spilled coolant. The job is complete.

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