one, two, three, four!
Rev up your engines!
It's time for the Scotty Kilmer Channel
today I'm going to show you, how you can take the dash of
your car apart, to fix any problems inside like burned out light bulbs, now a
lot of people are afraid of taking the dash apart, but in most cars it's
actually pretty simple, because there's not that many parts to take off, and if
you look in this Toyota, you'll see there's two holes here
they have Phillips screws in them, so you get Phillips screw driver, and in this case
you use a stubby Phillips screwdriver, a short, one so will fit in and won't Jam
against part of the plastic, then you just stick it in the hole and take the
two screws out, and out they come, and then if you have an adjustable steering
column like this, pull it out, so you got the most space possible to get the dash
piece out, then you get your fingers under the dash, and pull the little clip
out, you got to squeeze a little sometimes, but the whole thing slides
right out, now we haven't touched anything electronic yet, so now it's time
to disconnect one of the battery cables before we get the electronics, so we
don't short anything out, we'll just loosen the positive battery cable then
wiggle it, take it off and move it out of the way,
you always want to do that when working on electrical components, because you
wouldn't believe the amount of people that have called me and said, oh I took
my dash apart, but I shorted something out and now my car won't start,
take that battery cable off, you can't short anything out while you're working,
now we can just remove the four bolts that hold the dash unit in place, there's one
on each corner, then you tilt the dash a little and start to pull it out, then when
you get it part of the way out, you see there's an electrical connection, you
push the tang in the top and pull it out, then you can remove the whole dash
assembly out of the way, you can access the back side to take out light bulbs if
you need to change light bulbs, or if you have a bad gauge or something you can
take the whole thing apart and replace that, you can see there's little plastic
tangs and hold them on, they used to have screws but now they're really cheap, you
just push the little tangs in, then you can take it apart in three pieces, first
you take off the cover, when you push these tangs you can snap the whole top
off, then when you push these black tangs in,
you can take the middle part off, then the middle part comes apart, so if you
have any broken gauges or parts, you can just finish taking it all apart, replace
the part that you need, put it all back together again, and here's a tip I've
used for years, say your tachometer breaks, these tachometers can cost so
much money, sometimes five or six hundred bucks, go to a junkyard and buy a whole used
dash, I've gotten them as cheap as $80 and I replace the whole unit then, then when
you're done it's easier putting it together, the pieces just snap right on,
first the middle piece, then the top piece, then you snap the electrical
connection in the back of the dash, and then wiggle it in place to get it back
in it's hole, there's a line up notch on each side one on the left, and one on the
right, so you get them in the right holes and lined up, then you put the four
little bolts back in, then get the plastic cover and snap that back in
place, and then put the screws in then hold it in place and keep it from
rattling, and of course put the battery cable back on, make it nice and tight,
otherwise the car won't start you won't go anywhere, so the next time your car's dash
starts acting up, why not take it apart and fix it yourself, and remember if
you've got any car questions just visit the Scotty Kilmer channel and I'll
answer them as soon as I get back from the twilight zone!