How to Replace Spark Plugs 2007-14 Toyota FJ Cruiser

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. I'm going to be doing some spark plugs. 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 these or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

So here we are friends. We're under the hood. All we're going to do, unclip this, unclip this, get this out of the way. This is our air filter by the way. We can take a peek. Looks pretty great. I could show you how to replace that if you need. I just did.

There we are. So here we are. You've got some coils under here. Underneath these are the spark plugs. To disconnect the coils, there's a little tab right here. Give it a little squeeze. I squeeze it. I twist it. I pull it. I check it. I don't see any funny colors. No rainbows. Green's bad obviously. Blue's bad under there. Rust, no good. This looks really great. Let's set it aside.

So right here's a 10 mm, so you can use whatever you want. I don't recommend using an airgun for anything like this. I'll just use a ratchet. It's easy enough. Break her free. There's our bolt. We'll set that aside. Put our ratchet aside. Grab the coil. Give it a nice little twist. This right here, it's just a little boot. Should be right up on there just like that.

So now it's time to go ahead and remove the spark plug. We're going to use a 5/8 socket, an extension, and a ratchet. You can get any tool you need to do this job at 1AAuto.com by the way. We sell everything you'll need, including the parts. Just going to get this completely out of here. I'll show you what it looks like. Oh, okay I'm exhausted. Go for some cookies, some milk, and a nap.

So there's our spark plug. As you can tell, it's looking pretty nasty. I would say it's definitely time to go ahead and replace that. Let's go ahead and compare it to a new one.

We have our original plugs that we just pulled out of our 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. Over here we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. What you want to do is you want to compare the two of them next to each other. Make sure that the length of the threaded area is the same. If your new one's like this and your old one's like that, you're going to have a big issue. Vice versa, doesn't matter. Even if it's just the tiniest bit, you want to make sure that they're both exactly the same, okay. Also you want to check the top, make sure that the ceramic area's the same. Comes up to the same height. It's very important. We'll set this aside.

Your new spark plug from 1A Auto comes with a brand new crush washer on it, which is also very important. It's got an electrode in there. Creates the spark for you. And these are NGK, which is one of the best quality spark plugs you can get. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a great spark plug to go ahead and put into this vehicle, so I'm going to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com.

So one thing that's very important to do when you get new spark plugs, you want to make sure you check the gap on it. I know they're brand new. They should come where they're supposed to be gapped to, mistakes happen. Maybe it got dropped along the way. The electrode area got bounced down. So just grab a little gapper, the gap on these should be between .040 and .043. I'm going to take a gapper, just going to stick it in here. A little bit of gap, that's the .040. Feels pretty great. If it was to the point where I could take something, let's see if I can find something here. Well this one doesn't go small enough. But anyway, let's say I had quite a bit of movement there. Right. Let me show you on the old plug. Let me grab the old plug.

So I've got my new plug and my old plug. Just wanted to show you. We've got our gap on the new plug, .043. This fits in nice and snug. Set that aside so it can't fall down. This is our old plug. I'm going to do the same thing, .043. I haven't moved it. That's how worn this is. You can pretty much see the gap. I could almost probably fit another .043 in-between there with it. So this plug's very worn. It's a good thing we're doing a tune up on this, or replacing the spark plugs I should say.

So with that said, let's move along. I'm not sure if you can see the difference in the gap there? It's huge. That means the old plugs were very worn. The spark had to jump quite a bit, so you were losing fuel economy that way.

So right along here is the crush washer I was mentioning before. So when you tighten it down, it might feel like it bottoms out. But you have to make sure that you keep tightening a little bit there and crush down that washer, okay. Super important. Now do you need to use a 1/2 in long breaker bar to try to tighten it down from this far out? No. But you do have to make sure that it's snug, okay. So I'm going to take my ratchet off of it, get it on my socket. It doesn't fall off a 5/8 socket like I told you before. If I can get it on there. Okay.

Now at that point, I can tell that I just bottomed out the crush washer to the engine. Tell it just by feeling it. It got a little stiff. I'm just going to go a little bit. Now if feels like it's getting even stiffer. That feels pretty good. I didn't go ahead and put any real pressure on it and come out here with a big, long ratchet and try to keep turning. You know what I mean? That feel good.

You don't want to-

Okay, we're going to torque down the spark plug to 13 foot pounds. There we are. See that one more time. There we go. We'll do the same to all the spark plugs as we continue.

We've got our brand new coil. I like to use a little bit of dielectric grease, specialty grease that allows electric current to travel through it. Put a little bit here. Little bit there. Little bit along here, okay. You can go right along there if you want. That's where your electrical connector is going to be. It'll help keep moisture out of there. You don't want any corrosion in there.

Bring this down into its hole. I can feel it touching up against the top of the spark plug. I'm just going to keep going. All right there. The gasket's going to hit up against the engine right there. And grab our bolt. Start it in here. Okay. Bottomed out a little bit. I like it. My socket off of there. We've got our connector. We're going to push it in, we're going to listen for a click. There it is. We'll give it a little tug. It's holding in strong. It's not coming off.

If for some reason you grabbed it and it does just, let's see if I can even get it to do it? Let's say you've pushed it on, well whatever it's going to just lock back in. It just want's to be locked. But anyway, you push it on, it's supposed to be locked. You give it a tug, it comes right off, there could be something wrong with your lock right there. You need to make sure it's locked. This one works so good, that it just wanted to lock back in on its own again. Am I going to go through taking it off again, nah. I'll move along. I know this one's clipped in. We'll move along to the next one. We'll do the rest on this side and we'll go over to that side.

Okay feels pretty good. All new. Looking great. Take our air filter, it's going to slide right in here, the air filter housing. Clip in on the front. Lock these puppies in. Give her a little shake, make sure the back doesn't come unclipped. Feels good. Let's move alone to the driver's side of the vehicle.

So this side's the messy side. We've got all sorts of stuff that might be in the way. This bracket right here, more likely going to be in the way. We've got a 12 mm right here. A 12 mm located on the bottom. You'll remove a pair of those. Take this bracket out and set it aside.

These hoses and things, they can move around. Just come right out right here. Let's see, slides right out of these little clips. Gives you some room. You're going to remove your 10. Unclip your coil, well unclip your coil, then remove your 10. Pull the coil out of there. Take out the spark plug. Put in your new spark plug, new coil. Off you go. Do the same for the other two. We'll put the bracket back on. Easy peasy.

Well we've got this coil ready to come out. It's the center one. It's the reason why I told you we've got to take off that bracket. You can turn it any way you want. And it just won't come out of here. Okay. Turn it around if you want. Try whatever you want to do. Does not come out. So we're going to remove this 12, bottom 12, and then it should give us plenty of room to move along.

A little bonk. Leave that on there for a little bit. Come down here. If I can grab this bottom bolt. Just use the socket for something to hold onto here. Get the bolt out of here. I'll show you what it looks like. Lower bolt. Put that aside so I can't lose it. Holding the bracket, come on baby. There it is. Got our bracket out of here. That's the way it sits. Curvy ends down. Second bolt. Easy peasy. Now let's see if we can get this coil out of here. Cool. Let's go ahead and replace it.

This hose right here is in the way of getting out this coil. It's pretty easy to take care of. There's a little squeezie clamp right back there. You can do it by hand. There's one right here. Do it by hand. You want to give it a little squeeze. Not much tension there. Pull the clamp down. I'm going to take my hose, pull it right off. Take a peek at it. It's pretty cracked. I'm going to see about trying to replace that at some point. For the purpose of this video, I'm not going to worry about it yet. I'm going to squeeze that back one, give my hose a tug. There's our hose. I'll set this aside. Now we have a clear view of our coil back there. We can get to this easy peasy at this point.

We're going to go ahead and install our hose now. I've got all coils in. Give the clamp a little squeeze. It's easy. Just slide it in. Love it. Give this one a squeeze. Slide it up. Line it back up with the way it came off. I liked it there, it was there for a long time. It want's to stay there.

We got our bracket and with the little bump coming out on the lower end. It wasn't like this. It was like this, the rusty end was down. And grab one bolt. I'm going to start in on the top because it's easier to reach. Not going to tighten it down until I get the other bolt started. I'm just going to use my socket, it gives me a little something to grab onto. Start it in the whole down here. Okay. At this point, I can go ahead and tighten this up if I want. And I do want to. Grab my ratchet. All right. I'll get this one so it's close. Jsut easier to do this than with the ratchet. Cool. Let's tighten these puppies up. Have my ratchet in the on position. Feels pretty good. I don't want to break my plastic intake. This one down here, this is just using our 12 mm socket that we used to take them off obviously. Feels great. Bracket's nice and tight. Hose is on there. Want to make sure that we push our hoses that we might have pushed off of these clamps back in. Everything's secured. Perfect.

We'll get all our tools out of here and we'll spark it up. All right friends, here we go. Let's get ready to start this up.

Feels like it's purring like a kitten. RPMs are good. I don't feel any shutter inside the vehicle. No misfire. No check engine light. I'd say we're good to go.

So let's say you're inside your vehicle just after you completed your work. Right, you started it up. Everything felt fine for a second. Maybe your check engine light came on or maybe you're inside the vehicle and you can feel a shuttering a little bit. Shaking. Your RPMs jumping around. You could have a misfire. At that point, you could have one of your coils, maybe wasn't plugged in all the way. Okay. So that would be the first thing that I would check. I would just grab all my coil wires, give them a little squeeze. Maybe it didn't clip in. It's possible. Human error. Okay. If all those were good, you can try starting it up again, double check it. If it's still doing the same thing, you might have a spark plug issue. Okay.

If you have a spark plug issue, it could be something as simple as a cracked plug. Can happen in shipping. Maybe you used the wrong socket. You used a 16 mm instead of the 5/8 spark plug socket you should be using. Anything can happen.

If your check engine light's on, of course you can pull a scanner out or go some place that has a scanner and have it checked. That'll give you a proper diagnosis of what to start looking for. But those would be where I would start.

So with all that said, this engine ran perfectly for me. So I don't have anything to worry about. So you can always check us out for any parts or instructional videos. Thanks.

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