Sienna

How to Change the Air Filter on a 2004-2010 Toyota Sienna

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Don’t pay someone $30-40 to change your air filter when you get your oil changed–you can do it yourself for under $15 in parts!  Here’s how…

How to Change the Air Filter on a 2004-2010 Toyota Sienna

Equipment:

I took my Sienna into Jiffy Lube and they do a good job of checking your air filters and my engine and cabin air filters were dirty but I didn’t want to pay what they were asking to change them since I can get the filter for less than half that price on amazon.com (engine air filter can be found here for $10.49 as of 9/9/13) and it’s pretty easy to do, I opted out.  You can read about how to change the cabin air filter in my post here.  Follow along to learn how easy it is to change your Toyota Sienna’s air filter…

Step 1: Pop the hood on your van.

This lever can be found below and left of your steering column.

Hood latch being pulled.

Step 2: Release the retainer latch of your hood and lift up the hood.

This keeps your hood from flipping up and smashing your windshield if you were to accidentally to pull the hood release while going down to the road.  I saw a video of this actually happening and I would not recommend it!

The hood retainer lever is circled in red.  This is just above and to the right of the Toyota logo on the front of the van.
Put your fingertips under this and lift the lever and simultaneously lift the hood and it will lift up.

Step 3: Hold the hood open by inserting the support rod into the slot.

Step 4: Locate the black plastic air cleaner assembly where the air filter is located.

It is on the back side of your battery if you are facing the front end.

Air cleaner assembly on a 2004 Toyota Sienna

Step 5: Using a 10 mm socket loosen both bolts on the air filter assembly box.

Luckily the Toyota engineers were smart in that they made the bolts “retained” so you don’t have to worry about loosing them.  They will slide out the end if you aren’t a little careful though.  The back one is tricky since you can’t see it but it is located in the same place as the front one on the back side.  One thing to note is that they shouldn’t be on there all that tight–they are just hand tight.  You will be removing the two bolts marked (c) in the diagram below:

The air cleaner assembly diagram from the shop manual with the two lid bolts marked (c)
My 10mm wrench on the front bolt


My 10 mm wrench on the back bolt

 Step 6: Lift up the lid of the air filter assembly box and slip out the filter.

You’re going to leave all the hoses and wiring harnesses connected.  Lift up the right side and dislodge the hinges on the left side and you will be able to slide the filter out.  You don’t need to worry too much about debris falling out into the box because the direction of air flow is up.  Depending on how bad things are you may consider vacuuming out the box but in the least pick out the large debris (leaves, etc).  Any sand or heavy small debris will be fine down there because it cannot be drawn up through the filter.

Lifting up the lid of the air cleaner box
Removing the air filter

It was pretty dirty!

The bottom side of my old dirty filter


Step 7:  Install the new air filter.

There is a top, bottom, and front to the air filter so be careful to set the filter into the box properly.  One corner of the filter is square and the other three are rounded.  The square corner goes on the front driver’s side.  I had a hard time this last time getting the back edge of the filter up where it belongs because the lid of doesn’t want to get out of the way because of all the hoses connected to it.  You’ll need to play around with it for a bit.  I’ve found that the best way to hold the top cover up and out of the way is to hold it in the following way:

How to lift the air filter lid
How to grasp the air filter lid to lift it out of the way to install the filter.

Here is a close up of the underneath and front of vehicle edge of the filter:

The side of the filter closest to the camera goes down and the top of the filter goes towards the front of the vehicle

 

FRAM Extra Guard CA9360 Engine Air Filter for 2004 Toyota Sienna XLE
Fram Extra Guard CA9360 Engine Air Filter CA9360 upside down.
The side closest to the camera goes toward the front of the vehicle.

Step 8: Place the top back on the air filter box and reinstall the two bolts.

Make sure everything is aligned correctly.  As you can see from the picture below, at this point, the hinges on the left are unhooked (and this made it easier for me to install the new filter):

New filter installed, but the air cleaner cover is not installed

It always takes me a bit of messing around to get the cover back on correctly.  The left hinges need to fit under a slot on the lower case:

Installing the cover requires hooking the hinges into the slots on the left side of the body of the air cleaner assembly.

Also, the notch on the front right needs to set down in it’s hole, and the bolts need to line up.  Below is what it looks like when everything is lined up and the bolts are back in. You can barely see the white basket in the seams.

Air cleaner box lid reinstalled

Now you’ve saved yourself $15-$20!

Many of My Other Toyota Sienna Posts:

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John Mueller
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1 Comment

  • Thanks…I had forgot about the “square” corner, fit right in…think that’s why I had trouble last time.

    Reply

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