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How to Replace Radiator 2007-09 Toyota Camry L4 2-4L

Created on: 2017-10-04

Check out this video to learn how to replace the radiator on your 07-09 Toyota Camry. You can do it yourself! 1A Auto shows you how.

  1. step 1 :Removing the Front Bumper
    • Place tape along the edge of the bumper to mark its location
    • Remove the 10mm bolts from the splash shield
    • Remove the splash shields
    • Turn the clip in the fender liner on either side
    • Pull back the fender liner
    • Remove the 10mm bolt from the bumper on either side
    • Remove the 10mm bolt from the metal support on top of the bumper
    • Pry up the plastic pin from the headlight with a flat blade screwdriver
    • Remove the Phillips retainer from the bracket
    • Pry up the plastic pin from the headlight with a flat blade screwdriver
    • Pull the bumper off of the bracket
  2. step 2 :Draining the Coolant
    • Remove the 10mm bolts from the splash shield underneath the bumper
    • Remove the lower splash shield
    • Open the radiator
    • Drain the coolant into a bucket
    • Remove the radiator cap
    • Remove the 10mm bolts from the intake tube
    • Remove the intake tube
  3. step 3 :Removing the Hood Latch
    • Remove the three 10mm bolts from the hood latch
    • Lift the hood latch out of the vehicle
    • Lift the cable out of the bracket
    • Slide the cable end out of the latch
  4. step 4 :Installing the Hood Latch
    • Weave the cable behind the horn bracket
    • Slide the cable into the latch
    • Place the latch on
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the latch
  5. step 5 :Removing the Upper Radiator Support
    • Remove the 10mm bolt from the bracket on the support
    • Disconnect the horns
    • Remove the 10mm bolts from the intake tube
    • Remove the intake tube
    • Remove the two 10mm bolts on either side
    • Lift the radiator support off of the rubber mounts
  6. step 6 :Removing the Radiator
    • Have a drain pan ready
    • Loosen the transmission line hose clamps
    • Pry off the transmission lines
    • Place a glove over the end of the transmission lines
    • Remove the clip on the radiator hose from the O2 sensor line
    • Loosen the hose clamp on the radiator hose
    • Pry the hose off of the radiator
    • Disconnect the wiring harness from the fans
    • Pry the wire out of the clips on the fan
    • Press in the clips to separate the radiator fan
    • Lift the fan up and out
    • Undo the lower radiator hose
    • Remove the 10mm bolts from the condenser
    • Remove the radiator from the condenser
    • Remove the grommets from the bottom and top of the radiator
    • Remove the radiator cap
  7. step 7 :Installing the Radiator
    • Press on the cap to the new radiator
    • Press on the grommets to the new radiator
    • Press on the lower radiator hose and tighten the clamp
    • Lower the radiator into the support
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the condenser
    • Lower the cooling fan into place
    • Lock the fan into the radiator
    • Clip in the electrical harness
    • Connect the wiring harnesses
    • Connect the upper radiator hose
    • Connect the O2 sensor wire clip
  8. step 8 :Replacing the Upper Radiator Support
    • Press the support into the slots
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts on either end
    • Tighten the front bracket to the support
    • Insert the air intake
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the air intake
    • Connect the horns
  9. step 9 :Installing the Hood Latch
    • Weave the cable behind the horn bracket
    • Slide the cable into the latch
    • Place the latch on
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the latch
    • Insert the transmission lines to the radiator and tighten the hose clamp
  10. step 10 :Installing the Front Bumper
    • Hang the bumper on the top brackets
    • Push the bumper into the bracket on both sides
    • Press in the push clips to the headlights
    • Tighten the Phillips retainers to the metal bracket
    • Press in the clips to the bumper
    • Tighten the screw to the bumper behind the fender liner on both sides
    • Replace the splash shield
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the splash shield
  11. step 11 :Adjusting the Hood Latch
    • Loosen the three bolts and adjust the latch accordingly if needed
    • Close the hood and check for panel gaps
  12. step 12 :Refilling the Coolant
    • Slide the intake tube into place
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts
    • Close the radiator drain plug
    • Insert the splash shield into place
    • Tighten the 10mm bolts to the splash shield
    • Insert a funnel into the radiator hole
    • Top the radiator off with the correct coolant
    • Turn the heat on
    • Start the car
    • Let the engine idle and bleed any air
    • Remove the funnel

Tools needed

  • Funnel

    Socket Extensions

    Rust Penetrant

    Small Hook

    Anti-Freeze

    Trim Tool Set

    Side Cutters

    Gloves

    Flat Blade Screwdriver

    Phillips Head Screwdriver

    Paper Towels

    Wire Ties

    Painter's Tape

    10mm Socket

    Drain Pan

    Ratchet

    Needle nose pliers

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

I'm going to put some protective tape on the edges of the bumper and the fender, so that while we're handling the bumper, we're going to avoid scratching up the paint. Just repeat this with the other side. To take the front bumper off.

You don't have to have the car in the air, but it does make it easier for us to show you what we're doing. You're going to remove this 10-millimeter bolt here. There was one here, all of them right across the front: one here, here, another one here, and this one over here. I’m just going to use a 10-millimeter socket. They do have a spot in them for a Phillips head screwdriver, but the socket makes it a little bit easier.

To remove these lower splash shields, I'm going to remove the other 10-millimeter bolts. One over here. I'm going to remove these bolts here, so I'm probably going to replace these with after-market ones. They're most likely going to be 10 millimeters, like the other ones, but on this car, they're 1/4". On each side of the bumper, there's a small plastic clip. We use a flat bladed screwdriver to turn it 90 degrees to unlock it.

Then we use a plastic prying tool, like the ones you can get at 1AAuto.com to pry it out. Put that aside so we don't lose it. That's what's holding in the bumper to this fender liner. Once you remove this pin, you got to move up here, and you can pull down the fender liner. There's a hidden fastener up here. It's 10 millimeter. Also has a Phillips head screw head to it, but I'm going to use a 10-millimeter socket because it's easier. Go ahead and remove it. Repeat this for the other side. This bolt might be a little rusty underneath. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant. Take our 10-millimeter socket and remove it.

This is a one single bolt that is holding on this entire middle support that's on the top of the bumper. On both sides of this bumper, there is a screw with a rubber cap around it and a bunch of these push pins. This larger one here attaches to the headlamp assembly. It's actually broken on our vehicle, so it needs to be pushed out so the bumper can come apart. I'm going to leave this one in here because it's already broken. We're going to remove this, and then the other side I will push this pin out.

Using a Phillips head screwdriver. That feels pretty rusty, I'm going to use some rust penetrant in there. See how the top of this bumper's now loose, so it's come off of this middle bracket. It should be pinned into here on the headlight, but this part of the headlight is actually broken off. You need to push this pin out. It's going to be pretty difficult where it's like a flush mounted pin, so I'm going to take a plastic prying tool that you can get from 1AAuto.com. I'm going to push it in here. I'll try to pry up on that. It'll work, it might not work. I might just take a very small flat-headed screwdriver, and go up in here. That actually did the trick. So that will be loosen from the headlight assembly. I need to remove this screw. With all the fastener removed, the bumper should unclip from the body.

You have to give it a bit of a pull to pull off of this bracket. It snaps down to here. It's going to actually sit on top of those metal brackets on the top of the bumper, so that's okay. I'm going to do the same on this side. Just got to put your hands underneath. Get a firm tug. With it loose, you can lift the whole bumper off.

Drain the coolant into an appropriate container. Open up the drain that's here. Once that's open, I can actually open the radiator cap. It should come out a lot faster.

Move the hood latch. Move the three 10 millimeter bolts that are holding it on. Pull this out. You kind of slide it out between the sheet metal. I just moved the horn out of the way. Now get some more slack. Take a flat bladed screwdriver and just pop this cable out of where it's sitting. Now with it out I can slide the little weight end just down there, and the latch is removed.

With the hood latch out of the way, I can get to this bolt because this entire upper radiator support is going to have to come out. That can just be loose. I'll put this bolt right back in the original spot, so it doesn't go missing. The horns are bolted to the radiator support that we need to remove. You can either unbolt them or unplug them and just take them with the radiator support, so we're going to unplug them by just squeezing on the lock tab and pulling it out. Same thing to the other side. Use just a flat bladed screwdriver to just push the lock in, and just pry them out.

Next up, we want to remove this intake tube. It's ten millimeter bolts that are holding it to the upper radiator support. That'll just lift out like that. Put that aside. I'm going to put our bolts back in there so I know where they go at the end. Then remove these two bolts. There's another two on this other side just like it, ten millimeter. I'll lift this upper radiator support off of these rubber mounts for the radiator. Slide it out from behind these air guides, and I've got the horns are going to come with it.

You could do this from up above, but it's easier to reach these from underneath. These are the transmission cooler lines that are going into the radiator, and you remove these clamps and then pull these lines off of the radiator. I'm going to put some glove fingertips over them, so they don't leak transmission fluid everywhere. Make sure you have a drain pan underneath to catch any fluid that leaks out. Take some more glove fingertips, put them over these lines because when we go to take the radiator out, we can swing it around, try not to get fluid everywhere. I'm going to remove this upper radiator hose.

The O2 sensor is clipped to it, so unclip it here and pull this apart. It just pops out. So squeeze these tabs, pull it apart, and then what I'm going to do, I'm just going to click it over here, so it doesn't get lost. Pull that out of the way, and use our pliers. Click these open. They do have little locks, but they're kind of tricky to get them locked. So all you have to do is move them out to the middle. Same thing for this one. That one actually locked for me, so it actually slid over the little tab there. I'm going to work this off the plastic of the radiator. I'm going to work it off the metal of the head. It kind of gets sealed on there with heat.

I'm going to use a pick to try to break the seal. I'm going to put this hose aside because we'll reuse it. One thing that's important to mention when you're dealing with a radiator on this car is that the AC condenser is bolted to it. The AC condenser has hard lines that run to your AC system and it's filled with Freon. Now you don't want to disturb this and puncture it or crack these lines and take them apart because you lose all your Freon and then your AC is not going to work, and then you'll need to go to a professional shop and have it recharged or repaired because it's not something that the average person can do in their driveway. So we're going to be really careful dealing with this AC condenser. I'm going to attempt to remove the fans right now to show you how to do that. I think with this upper radiator hose out of the way, it's pretty easy to do.

There's a flat bladed screwdriver to push the locks in. This connector out here, same way. You can use a clip prying tool to pry these out of the fan. Put this harness aside. The fan, the two fans are connected to the radiator with these push in clips on the top. There's three sets of them, and then it just slides over some pins in the bottom, so we're going to push these in, push it out, same thing over here. Push them in, push it out, and lift it up off the pins. It's a little tricky because it actually loops around the bottom of the lower radiator hose. Undo the lower radiator hose. I'm going to use a pick to break the seal. I'm going to remove this overflow tube, the hose. I'm going to use the pick to break the seal. I'm going to just put that aside.

Now we need to separate the radiator and the AC condenser. I'm going to use some rust penetrant on these top bolts and these two bottom bolts. Ten millimeter. Remove these and put them aside. What's going to happen is this condenser is just going to sit there. Now the radiator is completely loose and disconnected. I left the lower hose on here, so we'll pick it up out of the bottom grommets. Make sure you don't get caught under the AC condenser. Pull it straight up and out of the engine bay. I'm going to remove this lower radiator hose clamp. Now it's really easy to get to. Put the hose aside so I can reuse it. There are some grommets on the bottom of the radiator. Just slide them off so you can reuse them. There are two grommets on the top, also reuse those, and the radiator cap, we're going to reuse.

Here's our original radiator from our vehicle, and here's our brand new one from 1AAuto.com. You can see it's similar in design. You've got your automatic transmission cooling lines, pretty corroded, very corroded over here. You can actually see where the plastic end tank and the aluminum part of the radiator is crimped along the edge here. It looks like it's begun to separate and actually leak. You can see some dried coolant and a little bit of dampness from what looks like coolant that's come out. So this radiator looks like it was on its way out.

I'm just going to flip it over and compare it to the other one. It has the same mounting tabs as the original for the AC condenser, and the same pins top and bottom that those grommets are going to go on to. Can actually put them on right now. So these are our original grommets we'll have to reuse. These will go on the top, and these two will go on the bottom. Flip it back over.

We're going to reuse the radiator cap. This should fit great in our vehicle and help keep it cool. Radiator also shifts on these protective caps. They're on the end of these hoses so that debris doesn't get down in them. I'm going to leave them on until we're all the way installed and ready to put these lines back on. That way nothing gets in there. I'm going to reinstall our lower radiator hose while it's on the bench it's a little easier to deal with. It was roughly in that position. Put our hose clamp back down. Slide our new radiator down. It's going to go into the radiator support. And the grommets on the bottom of the radiator, one is going to sit here and the other one is going to sit in here. Trying to be very careful of our A/C condenser. I'm just going to put that there because it just kind of helps hold the radiator in place. I'm going to catch these top ones, so this actually is a little hook here. Go up and they will hook right there. Put our bolts back into them. Put in our bottom bolts.

Reinstall the lower radiator hose. Push the clamp back over. Reinstall the overflow tank hose. The bottom of the cooling fan shroud there are two tabs. They're going to match up with the two tabs down here in the bottom of the radiator. We also need to slide this hook. It's going to go on the other side of the lower radiator hose. It's pretty soft. I'm going to slide it in there. I'm going to have to squish the hose a little bit. You can feel them slide right over and they should line up with these upper push tabs. Once it's lined up you just push them in. They'll lock into place.

Now reinstall the electrical harness. These push clips will go right back in where they came out. We'll put this one over here. Put this back into here. This go back into here. This'll plug into here. So this original radiator hose. It's actually marked kind of where it was sitting. We'll put it back on that side and it lines up with the radiator on this side. You can also see the mark where our wire was sitting. So this one actually managed to lock so I can just slide it over without squeezing it together. Just going to sit it in the original spot, unlock it without snapping my fingers. Line it back up where it was. The upper radiator hose is installed.

We're going to put our O2 sensor wire back into place. Spin that back. This again, you squeeze it and it pulls apart. It goes underneath the hose.

Reinstall the upper radiator support. It's going to go down over, you'll have to slide it in these little air guides, those slots. They're kind of flexible. You can move them around. You also have to get it over these grommets. So it's in place. You can actually temporarily thread this in to help hold it and reinstall the four bolts, two on each side. Radiator support is reinstalled. Just going to tighten up this one. I'm going to plug the horns back in, and reinstall the hood latch. Take our hood cable, it was behind here. I can get the little lead weight part looped into here, and then we need to push the plastic part up into the bracket just like that. It's pushed up. I can spin this over, and then go behind that down and over. We'll get it lined up and these two upper bolts go here. It does have a little bit of adjustment, but you can kind of see the original, there's an outline where the original bolt heads were. For now I'm going to line it up with those and hope that it stays the same. If not, I'll have to come back and adjust it. See it moving around, so just do your best to line it up with where the marks were from the original bolts.

Got our drain pan in place because we're going to lose some transmission fluid here and we want to catch it. I'm going to take off these rubber caps that the radiator shipped with. You don't need them anymore. I'm going to grab this line here. This one goes here. Remove our zip tie. Install the hose clamp. Wipe up that oil. Pull this line down. Cut this zip tie off. I believe I had two of these because this one was like real leaky. Take this one off. Squeeze the clamp. Reinstall the air intake tube. Just slides over the air box. Lines back up on the radiator support. Install and tighten the ten millimeter bolts.

I'll reinstall the bumper. We'll hang it on the top brackets. This is why we put tape, so as we're moving around we don't scratch anything. This can be pushed back into the bracket now. Same for the other side. Install the push clips into headlamp.

Then these bumpers have bolts in them, Phillips head screw. Install the bolt on top of the bumper. I'm going to reinstall these plastic locks. They went in this way, and then turned. Install the self-tapping screw that's up here behind the fender liner. Reinstall the locking clip. Reinstall the self-tapping screw behind the fender liner. Reinstall the splash shield.

Slide up into the bumper. Reinstall the other half. This piece went up into here. Just reinstall whatever hardware that's original to the vehicle that you took out here. Peel off all the tape that you're using to protect the body work.

You need to adjust the alignment of your hood latch and loosen the three bolts, move the hood latch to where you need it to be. Close the hood. You can check the alignment of this panel gap between the hood and the fender and the same on the other side, along the edge of the bumper. Our car looks good, so I'm going to leave it alone.

Fill and bleed the cooling system. We have a special funnel setup to help us do that. You can do this with a regular funnel. This makes it a little bit easier. It's also easier for you to see it. I'm going to fill it with coolant, let the air bubble out. You can top the radiator off with the correct coolant, then we'll turn the heat on, start the car, let it idle to come up to temperature, then bleed out any air out of the cooling system. Now that's bled, we can take the funnel off. Carefully remove our adapter here. Replace our radiator cap. Dispose of the extra coolant properly.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.

2007 - 2009  Toyota  Camry
2010 - 2011  Toyota  Camry

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07-09 Camry 2.4L; 07-11 Camry Hybrid Radiator

Toyota Camry Radiator TRQ RDA82718

Part Details:

  • No
  • 15.75 in
  • Down Flow
  • Upper & Lower
  • Yes
  • Plastic
  • Male
  • Yes
  • Aluminum
  • Concentric
  • 1
  • 0.63 in
  • No
  • Bottom Right
  • Top Left
  • No
  • 400 mm
  • 28.75 in
  • 1.38 in
  • 1.38 in
$98.95
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