turboBB

Thx!

Hi all, Was just wondering if anyone knows what the torque value is for the caliper slider pin bolts on the front brakes of a '04 RX330? TIA!, Tim

In order to properly remove the Metal Skid Guard (MSG), you have to first remove the plastic splash guard ahead of it (towards front of the car). The plastic splash guard has a total of five 10mm bolts holding it in place including a pastic retainer in the center. Be careful when removing the plastic retainer as I snapped the edges off when trying to remove it with a flat head. Once the plastic splash guard is off, there are a total of four 12mm bolts that hold the MSG in place. Remove the two bolts in the front (towards front of the car) first and then remove the two towards the back (these two are recessed in holes so you'll need an extension on your ratchet). Be very careful when removing the final bolt as the MSG is purty heavy (around 10-15 lbs). Once you remove the final bolt, the rear of the MSG should swing down and be about perpendicular with the car since there are two small latches in the front. You should support the MSG since those 2 latches don't seem all that strong. It's a little tricky to remove the MSG as the latches are a Z shape (but with 90 degree angles for the Z rather than 45). Carefully examine it and you should be able to remove it. Once the MSG is off, you'll see that Lexus engineers actually added a little splash guard exactly where the oil will spill out once the oil filter is loosened. Purty slick. Good luck and let us know how it goes. If this is too much work, I think there are oil funnels with tubing attached that you can buy at Pep Boys. I suppose you can arrange it so it'll catch the oil that spills out and divert the tubing into the oil pan. I may go this route next time since removing the MSG was a pain and added about 15 minutes total to the oil change. As a side note, I used a Fram Tough Guard filter (TG 3614) which was about 15-20% smaller than the OEM filter. Anyone else used this?