1998 – 2004 Toyota Tacoma V6 Air Filter Housing
The Problem
These older Toyota Tacoma air cleaner housings are not one of Toyota’s best designs. We frequently find the tube section floating at the end of the air intake boot.
This should be a part that costs about $60 bucks, but it isn’t; it’s 10 times that much. Toyota wants a whopping $622 for this part. You might think you’d get a MAF sensor along with it at this price, but you’d be wrong. It’s just a new chunk of plastic, just as poorly designed as the one you’re replacing.
The 1998 to 2004 Tacoma is a little too old for our shop at this point, so this isn’t the repair will be doing for many people, just existing customers.
However I figured it might help to post how I repair these so that other people with the same problem (and I’m sure there are many) can fix it without spending a fortune at the Toyota dealership.
Way better than buying a replacement housing
This is a really great way to repair plastic. We also do plastic welding and a couple other types of plastic repair, but this method is by far the strongest and fastest. Its only downside is that you either need to be able to place the hot staples in an area that’s not visible, or, as in this case, on a part where it doesn’t matter how it looks
The staples come in a wide variety of shapes to work with nearly any project, and you can always bend them into a different shape if you need to .
Once I’m done adding staples I’ll cut all the ends flush. However, they’ll still be sharp so I’ll either grind or cover the cut ends.
Better than a new air cleaner housing
Once complete, the repaired part is much stronger than the original part and will be able to survive the air boot tugging on it every time the engine shifts with acceleration and deceleration.
I was holding the camera with one hand so the shaking wasn’t as vigorous as it could have been, but trust me; it’s super strong. The filter housing has a fair amount of mass but I’m not at all worried about the repair failing.
Prior to developing this method, we had tried super glue and epoxy, both of which were much weaker than the original part (which was already pretty weak).
I add a couple of beads of hot glue as a final step. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t want any unfiltered air to seep past the repair. The staples are strong, but they don’t seal.
The second reason is to make the part safe for the next guy. The cut ends of the staples are sharp and can cut you if you’re not careful.
If you don’t have a hot glue gun you can use silicone sealer, Shoe Goo, or whatever you have on hand.
An Inexpensive Fix
If you have a Tacoma with a broken air cleaner housing and would like to give this a shot, you can pick up the hot staple tool from Amazon, AliExpress, or eBay for about 20 bucks, including the staples. That’s about $600 cheaper than buying the part and at the end of it you have a pretty cool tool you can use to repair other stuff.