Front Windshield wiper switch not working

Elise,

I couldn't tell from your post, but are you using the wiper switch correctly?

Lift up once: results in one swipe

Pull down to position 1: results in intermittent wiping

Pull down to position 2: results in constant slow wiping

Pull down to position 3: results in constant fast wiping

 

And I just had a little wee come out i my pants I was laughing so hard, sorry.

Open the glove box, there is a little book in there well worth reading.


By the way, I really didn't wet myself, I was just expressing how hard I was laughing.
Sorry if my response offends.

Elise, the ring you turned that is part way down the wiper stalk it to control the time delay between wipes when on intermitent wipers.

 

Here's the 2007 Prius Owner's Manual on a PDF file (minus the table of contents and index):

2007 Prius Owners Manual.pdf

And here is the typed up table of contents that patsparks posted below:

Table of Contents 2007 Prius Owners Manual.doc

I recommend downloading a copy of the Owner's Manual PDF onto your computer.

It's a lot easier to find stuff with the PDF than leafing through the hard copy with its poor organization, poor indexing and unwieldy size. Just do proper word or phrase searches and you can usually find what you're looking for in seconds or a minute.

 

This must be the first Toyota you have owned (or at least needed to use the wipers on) because they all work that way. The Toyota truck(s) I have owned and my GF's Avalon also has the same type of wiper switch.

When my GF and I went to New Zealand in 2004, we rented a Toyota Corolla which also had the same type of wiper switch. Except the switch is on the other side of the steering wheel compared to the US version. Which means that every time I wanted to turn left, I would turn on the wipers instead of signaling a left turn. Very annoying.

 

I had a mirror image of that same problem when I went to Chicago...

 

My son's Daewoo has the indicator switch on the wrong (left) side, stuffs me up every time I drive it. We have a saying here, if the indicators are on the left, it will break down. (Euro cars have the indicator switch on the left.)

In Australia the indicator is normally on the right side of the column, it means in a manual car you can use your right hand to indicate, left hand for shifting gears. The Daewoo is a busy drive.

I'll add, the Daewoo was (almost) a gift from an uncle, otherwise it wouldn't be in my Toyota family. It's actually a pretty good car for a 17 year old high school student. A year's insurance cost as much as the car.

Oh, one more thing, Here is the table of contents for the owners manual Boo posted.

 

I bet they made you drive on the wrong side of the road, too. :madgrin:

 

I am having trouble figuring out how to turn them off!!! and I have looked at the manual.

How do you turn the front windshield wipers off? I fiddled around with it yesterday and managed to get them off but the only thing that turned them off last night was turning off the car. The manual is great for telling you how to turn them on and operate them but turning them off is weird. For one thing the wheel obscures my view of the controls. I don't want to leave them on permently that will damage the window if it is not wet.

 

Turning off is the reverse of turning on.

 

I tried that.

 

I don't have a 2010. However, there are really only two things you can do with the wiper stalk: either move the lever up and down, or else rotate the end of the stalk. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out how to turn off the wipers.

If you find that the switch really is not working, then you'll have to find the fuse for that circuit and pull it once it stops raining, then seek dealer help.

 

Hey, guys (dogfriend, sandsw, & patsparks),

In case you guys missed my post #28 in the thread entitled "Flat tire Disaster in using the supplied jack" (found in Gen III 2010 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting), I was sharing with aapoppa some memories of my long gone 1974 Peugeot diesel station wagon that the 3 of you can probably associate with your own "reverse-stalk" experiences. Here is an exerpt from that post :

"Remember the reverse mounted turn signal & headlight stalks? Your turn signal was on the right side of the steering wheel (& if you pulled it upwards toward your face, that would honk the horn), but that wasn't as bad or dangerous as the headlight stalk operation on the left side of the steering wheel [where most other car makers put the turn signal stalk (except for on my 1950 Buick---it's a tiny stalk placed on the right next to the big transmission shifter)]. In the Peugeot's square-pattern headlight stalk operation, from its off or neutral position, if you just flick the stalk forward towards the windshield or dash, that was your blink for a passing signal. To put on your parking lights from the off position, you just lifted the stalk towards your face. Then to turn your headlights on, from the already "up towards your face" position, you then pushed the stalk forward towards the dash or windshield again [& high beam was a push down towards the floor from your (up to the face then forward to the dash) "headlights on" position]. So in the dark if you had just your headlights on (NO high beams), & wanted to make a left turn & automatically flicked your left-mounted turn signal stalk (actually the headlight stalk on the Peugeot) rearward away from the dash (or counter-clockwise the same way you'd be turning the steering wheel for the turn), you would turn off your headlights & be in a dangerous situation until you realized what you had just done."

The only thing with the Peugeot's "reverse-stalk" issue is that at night the consequences would be a lot more serious than what you guys are talking about.

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

Hey, Boo (& patsparks too),

Thanks for the suggestion about being better able to find things in the owner's manual by using a downloaded pdf version of the manual [even though it's for a 2007 & my car is a 2005---there can't be that much difference (& if there is, at least the 2007 version should get me near the proper section of my 2005 manual)].

I'm not very computer literate, so how would I store the downloaded pdf & how would I access it later [or do you just download it each time you want to reference it (I assume it will take quite a while to download 435+ pages)?]? Then how do you do a search in a (stored?) document of this type to find what I'm looking for? If these explanations will be too involved for either of you to get into here, then I'll have to find someone else to ask or to show me.

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

You should only need to download it one time. Once you have downloaded it, move (or copy) it to a place where you can find it again when you want to look at it. I have a folder in my documents folder that is labeled 2007 Prius Manuals. Inside the folder I have PDF copies of the Owners Manual + all of the other manuals that I have collected (Service Manual, Wiring Diagram, Body Repair, Tech Training, Wiring Harness Repair).

When you want to search for something open in a PDF reader (Adobe Reader or Preview on the Mac). Adobe Reader has a search box at the top of the page that you can enter any phrase into (e.g. "Tire Inflation" returned 444 "hits"). There are forward and back icons (they look like pages with arrows on the Mac) that will let you skip forward or backward to each instance of the search term.

 

Just imagine if they combined the square pattern headlight switch with a manual transmission with the famous "3 on the tree" column shifter. It would be like patting your head and rubbing your tummy to drive the thing at night. :madgrin:

 

LOL!! That sounds like a really well designed car. (NOT!)

 

I have a 2013 Prius. Excellent car. However, I've noticed over the last year that the speed of my highest setting, 1, has been slowing down at first and would take some time to "warm up" to speed. Eventually, the 1st setting decided not to be higher than setting 2.

Well, finally, yesterday the Wiper, Setting 1, Setting 2 and Setting 3 decided to not work at all with no washer fluid coming out of the Wiper setting also. The wipers decided to stay put where they failed. Thankfully when I stopped the car to clean manual the windshield, the wipers fell back down to the not directly on the windshield position where turned off.

I do have wiper fluid coming out, so the wiper fluid pump is working other than the Wiper setting. All the other settings are working as should from what I observe.

I'm guessing the lever switch or controls somewhere have decided to go bad. Any ideas?