Hello, I got a deal ($1800) on an '08 prius yesterday that needed a hybrid battery and a catalytic converter. Since I have an '07 that I'm getting ready to part out that has an OEM cat and a newly rebuilt battery, this was a good deal for me. Already swapped outvyhe battery and it runs great. The issue is it doesn't have the Nav or Bluetooth. I've seen people say it's not worth installing it and/or it wouldn't work because a new wiring harness would be needed. Since my '07 has all that, would it be possible to do it or is it more if a PITA than it's worth? I don't need it, as I drive my '05 daily and occasionally my '13, but was thinking of giving it to my daughter. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Probably the components from your '07 could be transplanted ok. You'd need to transplant the head unit and the nav unit and the GPS antenna and whatever wiring isn't present in the '08.
Thank you. I thought that might be the case. Just not sure how difficult the job may be or if it's worth the time. Regardless, I plan on stripping the '07 down and storing all the parts in my garage before sending the shell to the wrecking yard. I plan to give the car to my daughter. Since she is not used to the Prius, she certainly won't be missing anything if I don't do the swap. Maybe it would be better to install a nice double-DIN aftermarket system. Also, since she lives in AZ, I won't need to swap the cats since AZ doesn't deal with the CARB regs.
Adding the wiring for the nav unit is hard. None of the wires at connectors N3, N4, N8 will be present in your '08. Most of the wires run up to the MFD, with a few branching off to other places in the dash to pick up power and SPD and REV signals. When I did this I removed and unraveled the donor car's main wiring harness ("instrument panel wire" in the repair manual) to get at the individual wires I needed. But this requires removing the carpet and stripping out the _entire_ dashboard, all the way up to the firewall. Then dissecting the harness also took forever. You might be able to save some time by leaving the harness in the '07, just cutting the relevant connectors off and splicing them onto new wires in the '08. Some of the wiring is shielded twisted pair, I'm not sure how well splicing it would go... Also watch out for the M13 connector. There are (at least) two different possible terminal arrangements depending on the MFD model. If the '08 came with the low-res MFD and no backup camera, when you swap it for the high-res one you'll have to rearrange the terminals in the connector.
Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place but I have a 2008 Prius. It didn't come with Nav. I installed a Nav MFD. The Nav doesn't work but I don't care about that. I just want the Bluetooth to work. The Bluetooth connects to my phone and I can hear callers but they can't hear me. I swapped out the dome light to one that came out of a Prius with a Nav unit so it has the microphone (I think). It plugs in ok but it still doesn't work. Callers still can't hear me.
