My 3 day old Prius II with 135 miles on it nearly gave me a heart attack a few minutes ago. I got off the train, got to the car. Got in powered it up. Exterior temperature is 48 degrees and in a couple of seconds had the ready light. Turned on the headlights, put the car in reverse and started to back out. Got half way out of the space and the instrument panel shut off. No speedometer, gauges, graphs. I still had the ready light, the headlight on light. I pulled back into the space, shut off the car. Restarted, all is well. Start backing out and the panel shuts off like before. Pull back in, try again, same thing. While backing out the instrument panel goes dark. Finally, I started to play with the instrument panel brightness dial and set it brighter and the instrument panel came back on. This just doesn't seem right. Do I have a problem here or is there some feature I am missing?
No problem, was it dark out? Was it just dimming and you couldn't see the display in the ambient light? This is normal when the lights are on. All you needed to do was turn the brightness up, turn the headlights off, or wait until it got dark. Live n learn.
It was dark out and I had the headlights on. The ready light was clearly visable and the panel looked black otherwise. I will play with it a bit and as I said when I finally turned up the brightness, the panel switched back on.
You might want to check the state of charge of your 12V battery. If it sat for a long time before you bought it, the 12V could be bad.
I just went out to the car and experimented. With the headlights on, the brightness adjustment goes from off to super bright and the adjustment knob sort of locks into place. With the headlights off, the brightness adjustment does absolutely nothing at all.
That is why I say it sounds like you have a problem. On my car, when I switch my headlights on, the instrument panel goes from bright (daylight) to dim (night) . Adjusting the instrument panel wheel all of the way up and the instrument panel goes back to bright or daylight. Below the top notch and the wheel has no affect. Also, like you say, with headlights off the wheel adjustment has no affect.
Yeah, I don't think you should be able to turn the display off completely either. I will put it on the list of problems when I bring the car in for its first service (unless it turns out to be a big problem now).
Caveat / probable error on my part: Read too quick - didn't realize you had been moving the dimmer switch. After reading your posts better, appears that yours is acting completely normal. with the headlights on, the panel goes from -dimmer at top lock, super bright, to completely off at its full down position. There may be instances when you want the panel to be completely off (An example - car's on but spying on your cheatin' girlfriend from the street at night...) Too-quick trigger earlier rsp: You have a faulty panel. I've seen several postings here re same. And my neighbor bought a III in August. His panel went out - they were driving home from South Carolina to Florida. Of course it failed in S.C. Back home (tough drive with no speedo or fuel gauge) Was in dealer 4 days - replaced the entire panel. Just fine now, but sure appears to be a faulty component with early life failure.
Did you check your dimmer switch? I recently found that there is a fine line between dimming the display and turning it off. On mine, the display does not go very dim, but if you turn it too far down, everything goes blank. I don't know why that is even possible.
Hmmm. User error, or the second or third faulty meter cluster reported in a genIII? If the latter, we're possibly onto the equivalent of the '04 MFD thing, but even sooner in the car's lifecycle. I wonder if the DIY fix will be similar... . _H*
Thats how I got the panel back. The dimmer switch was down very low. After experimenting, I realized that it only dims so far before it turns off. Seems like you should never be able to do that. I am ok for now at least and I will bring it in to be looked at when I do the 5000 mile checkup. If it becomes a problem, I will have to bring it in right away.
Since you're able to control the light, it's not a problem. Many other cars also dim to off with the rheostat. I knew one driver who liked to drive at night that way, aided his night vision. Any red or yellow dash warnings will still light. I'd rather have light, but there are occasions when turning it off can be good.
Here it is right from the service department of the dealership. The dimmer is supposed to turn off the instrument display if turned down all the way. Seems like it should be illegal to build a car that does that but there you go. Nothing wrong with my car.
It would be okay if it only went dark when turned all the way down. My switch still has a lot of play after it goes dark, so it's not nearly "turned down all the way."
I just checked my dimmer switch and it does begin to dim but only after about 1/2 the distance. Then it dims down to off at the very bottom. Since it did not seem to dim during the first 1/2 of travel, I just "assumed" that it did not dim at all. According to the Owner's Manaul, there are two custom features that can be programmed at the dealer that have to do with how this dimmer switch responds to either brighten or dim the instrument panel and nav panel based on outside light. Has anyone had either of these features programmed by their dealer?
