2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Front & Rear 4 Piece Complete Strut Assembly & Shock Absorber Kit TRQ SKA62116

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

You need to remove a bunch of the trim in here. That is unlocked but if this was locked, little knobs here tell you how to unlock it, this one you turn counterclockwise, this one you turn clockwise. Lift it up, then you take the whole floor out of the cargo area. Lift this tray right out.

For the passenger side, we'll lift this cover off, it's actually where your battery is. If you're doing the driver's side, you just lift out this cover. This tray can come out it has a little screw piece in here, it's actually a plastic screw, if its loose enough, you can take it off with your fingers. It is a 10 mm plastic piece, it also has a spot for a screw, but once that's out, you can lift this plastic out and take it out as well. From here, the procedure will be the same for both sides. We're going to pop this trim piece up from the trunk area, it just un-clips, it should come up and out.

Now remove the cargo tie down hooks, there's one here and one here. They both have these 10 mm bolts in them, so we use a 10 mm socket extension. Put those aside and do the same for the other one.

There's a 10 mm screw up here. You could put a Phillips head it in or use your 10 mm socket. Push the seat down to get it out of the way because I need to remove a cover behind here to get to the screws so I can take this whole trim panel out. You could try to pop this out and fold it back, but I don't want to damage this trim cover, it will just pop out. It doesn't give you a lot of room, you'd really have to fold it and I don't want to damage it. So at the top there's this little cover here, this is probably where a privacy cover goes, if it's missing. There's a little slot, take the small flat bladed screwdriver and pry this out. You're going to take this out, this is actually the fastener here.

Slide the seatbelt out of the slot here. Work this panel out of the little lockdown loop for the seat and also slide it out from behind the panel here. Then work up, out from behind this panel and we'll put this aside so that just clips back up in there. The driver's side will be the same.

You need to pop the hubcap off, you can use a large flat bladed screwdriver or a small pry bar. Just kind of work it under the edge of the hub cap. It should pop right off. Use a 21 mm deep socket and a large breaker bar to loosen the lug nuts of the vehicle on the ground so the wheel doesn't spin on you. This will make it a lot easier to take them off once it's up on the jack stands.

Then, raise, and support the vehicle. You can do this with a jack and jack stands. We're going to use our two-post lift. Finish removing the lug nuts, using the socket. Put the wheel and tire aside. Just going to hold onto the wheel because it wants to fall off once I get this lug nut loose. Take the wheel and tire off, put it aside.

I'm going to lift up and support on the rear axle beam where the spring is, most likely if you're doing this in your driveway, you're going to have the vehicle on the jack and jack stands underneath that rear axle beam, but you just want to make sure. So, you're not using this to jack the car up, you're just using the piece of wood to support this side of the axle beam so that when you remove the axle, it doesn't fall. Just a couple of pumps like that. Most likely, you've go your jack and jack stands supporting on this axle beam anyways if you're doing this in your driveway, but just like that should be good.

Now you can remove the lower bolt, remove the upper nut and slide the shock out of place. I'm going to spray some rust penetrate on the nut and bolt. I'm going to remove the nut. I don't want to spin on the bolts, you could break the bolts. So, we'll start on the nut side, using a 17 mm socket, and a long breaker bar, okay, got the nut loose. I'm going to counter-hold the nut now that it's loose, and I'm going to use the 17 mm socket and the ratchet on the bolt, this way try to drive the bolt out of the center part of the shock. Thread the nut off of here. I'm just going to work the bolt out, there we go.

I'm going to go in through the passenger rear door, so that I can reach over, with one hand and hold onto the shock while I remove the nut. I'm going to reach in here, hold the shock from the outside, spin the nut off. I need arms that are a foot longer. There, we'll get the nut afterwards, take the washer off. Here's our shock. We'll actually take this cover off and reuse it on the new one. You put that aside.

Here's our original shock absorber we pulled from our vehicle, and our brand new one from 1aauto.com, comes with this strap on it just so it's compressed while shipping. You can't cut that right off before you install it. Comes with a new locking nut, same exact style and design, this will work great, fit great in your vehicle.

Just cut our shipping strap off and take the cap off. Put the old bump stop and dust cap back on. Just like that and you can actually press the strut if you need to. This is probably the way with the least amount of struggle if you to do this, is to slide the shock up into the opening on the body.

All right, I'll have the bolts handy and you can push on this. Should compress fairly easily up inside here. Push the bolt through, just catch the nut for now. Now you can go up inside the car, install the nut at the top and then finish tightening them up. Make sure you put this washer back on. We'll install the new locking nut, thread it down as far as it will go, eventually it will touch the locks on the very end, then I'll have to use my wrench.

I'm going to use a 5 mm hex key to counter-hold the top of the shock. Use an 18 mm wrench, just tighten it up. Once I feel it get tight, that's where I'll stop. Counter-hold the bolts with a 17 mm wrench. Then we'll tighten up in the nut, see if I can get this started now with my fingers, so there's less to spin with the ratchet. Tighten it up, when I feel it get tight, I'll stop. You can lower the jack. Repeat this for the other side, you should always do this in pairs, and your job will be complete.

The only thing different on the driver's side I'll just pull this out a little bit, when you reinstall it, you'll have to reconnect your courtesy light that's in the trunk. Click it and it locks in place and then of course you'll unplug it by pushing in the lock, pulling it out and taking this trim off. Otherwise, it's identical to the passenger side.

Take our lug nut off that we had on here to hold the brake rotor in place. Now I can reinstall the wheel and tire. Get it up in place, try to get them centered as best you can, these lug nuts do have a shoulder on them. The wheel is both hub-centric and then lug-centric so the lug hole are a little bit wider. As you turn these in, they're going to center themselves so get them started by hand, get this one in as far as I can go. Then reinstall the other three, four. Once you get these all threaded in by hand, I'll take the socket and just line them up and put the vehicle on the ground, torque the lug nuts. I'm going to torque the lug nuts to 76 foot pounds in cross pattern. Once it clicks, they're all set. Line up the hole for your valve stem. Push your hubcap into place.

Reinstall the trim panel. Kind of get it in place here, you have to slide it. It's very flexible, it will go between the carpet. Just pull the seatbelt out of the way here so there's a lip here that's going to go underneath the trim. So, you just kind of have to carefully maneuver it. It does have some flex to it. Push it in underneath, there's also an opening here for the hook that the seats hook to when they're up. Slide it down, push that over, then push this behind. Just going to pop that in here. Then feed the seatbelt, make sure it's not caught, it's going to go underneath and through this opening here. It will sit in the trim. We'll get it lined up. There's a bunch of tabs on the top. Get it pushed down in place. The tricky one to get in, is this clip here. It needs to go in front of the seatbelt. There's a square opening in the sheet metal for it, so you've got to kind of flex the trim around a bit. I'll get the other part started. Snap it in place.

Get these lined up, clip them in place. We'll put this plastic lock back in. It goes underneath where the seatbelt sits. Just pushes in place. We're going to install the self-tapping screw that goes up here. It's going into a plastic grommet, once it gets tight, just stop.

Reinstall the cargo tie down hooks, they have a tab. This front one, the tab goes towards the top. Helps locate it. These have these chrome bolts, get it started, just tighten it up and then stop. Do the same for this one here. The tab goes towards the bottom. This panel goes just here above the battery, clips into place. Just make sure your weather strip is over your carpet. You can just push it with your thumb to adjust it.

Reinstall the cover. It just clips into place. This side panel, clips over here, over the battery. It just sits in place. This little cargo bucket goes down here. The threaded plastic screw goes here, just tighten it by hand, that's it right there. The cover goes over it. The cargo tray goes in here.

Reinstall your folding cover. There's three tabs at the top, those slide into place. You can close it. You can turn it to lock it, if you want to. I'm actually going to readjust this cargo hook so it's up. Put back down if you've got a cargo liner, will to back on top. Otherwise, the back of the car is reassembled.

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