Reflection on windshield while night driving.

To the left of the steering column there is a scroll wheel. You can lower/dim the amount of light from the dash by scrolling down. I learned this when I scrolled to the highest setting. The highest level is when you scroll up and feel a click. I ended up keeping the lit setting right before the click is felt.

 

Another option is to put a piece of flat black cloth on top of the dash to stop the reflection.

Tom

 

Welcome to the club, if you look to the left of the steering wheel, on the lower dash, you will find a small rotary wheel. Its the control to dim the display. If you click it all the way on, the Nav map will stay in daytime mode, as well as full illumination on the speedo unit. If you take it off full on the MFD map will activate night colors, and you can dim the speedo unit. Play with it!!

Have fun de Pat KK6PD

 

The steep rake of the windshield is most likely responsible for the glare. For example, my FJ windshield is almost vertical, and has no glare

 

Actually, I don't think it's a reflection off the dash, so putting non-reflective material on the dash will not work. Rather, it's an overspill of light from the speedometer projector and mirror. (Or it's a reflection of light coming from those recessed nether regions, which still cannot be stopped by putting less reflective material on the dash.)

Personally, it doesn't bother me. But if it really bothers you, you'll have to jerry rig some sorta barrier to block the light.

See this thread (especially nerfer's and my posts):

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/35892-glare-windshield-night.html

 

Hi Jjason82,

This is easily dealt with. I put a piece of black foam rubber in front of the surface that reflects the green display up to the windscreen. Just held it in place with a double faced tape. The smaller reflection from the foam goes off in a direction where it does not reflect back to me anylonger. Problem solved. Check out like Boo sent you for details of a other solutions.

 

I have noticed the reflection too. Although for me, it's not the dash lights, rather the entire surface of the dash seems to be strongly reflected onto the windshield.

 

Don't use anything that makes any part of the dash shiny, like Armor All.

 

The speedometer, odometer and fuel gauge are projected from below the dash onto a mirror, so it looks like they are further away, so the driver doesn't have to change their focus so much from looking at the road to looking at the speedo.

The speedo probably needs a bigger hood to prevent overspill onto the windscreen.

On UK cars, we don't have the dashboard brightness dial. Instead, you press the mph-km/h button repeatedly to cycle from daytime brightness (auto-adjusted by ambient light sensor), bright, medium and dim. I find bright causes the objectionable reflection, medium is OK, dim is too dim. Annoyingly after you leave the car in 'daytime' mode, the next time you turn the headlights on, the dash is in 'bright' mode again.

 

On my 2008 Prius (in Australia) there is no rotary dial to turn down the display. There is however, a button under the MFD Display that when you press it, reduces the display brightness in steps. The other use, is if you are driving during the day with the lights on, you can press and hold the button for a few seconds, and it will 'reset' the MFD and Speedo display to full brightness. It also toggles the GPS map between night and day mode. It resets when the car is turned off.

Hope that helps!

 

donee,

Your foam suggestion sounds great. What was the shape and size of the foam you used?

 

It was about 1/2 inch thick (across the core) by 3/4 inch tall (along the smooth surface). It was cut from a piece of heavy duty poly-urethane floor matting, like they have in machine shops.

 

Thanks. I have one of those hardware store rolls of 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch black, closed cell, sponge tape (self-stick peel and press) lying around. I'm sure I can make it work.

 

Black foam barrier to redirect/block green speedo glare

I believe there are basically 2 ways to stop that green bar of speedometer glare onto the windshield:

1. Horizontal Barrier: Place and tape a 6 inch long card horizontally onto the sloping dash in the area of the speedometer projector/mirror so it hangs over the projector/mirror just enough to stop that green bar speedo glare or overspill onto the windshield.

This method works, but the amount of overhang required varies from person to person. 1/2 inch of overhang might work for me, but for someone else that same amount may block some of the actual speedometer reading. So this method can be problematic when you have more than one driver of the car.

2. Vertical Barrier: Tape a 6 inch long, 1/2 - 3/4 inch high vertical barrier onto the sloping dash right at the edge above the speedometer projector/mirror, as first suggested by nerfer in another speedo glare thread and by donee here with his use of black foam.

This method works -- seemingly by the vertical wall acting to reflect, disperse or redirect that overspill of speedometer green light away from the windshield. And I think it works better than method #1's overhanging flat card because no future adjustment seems to be necessary for different drivers. As Ron Pompei would say,"You set it and forget it."

Anyways, I had a roll of black 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch foam self-stick tape lying around, so I thought I'd give it a go. Here are the photos:

The roll and 6 inch long piece of foam I used:



Tape the foam onto the dash at the edge above the speedometer projector/mirror:



And here's how it looks from the steering wheel/driver's seat:



Not too bad looking. And it works!

Note that you don't have to use foam as the vertical barrier. I think anything opaque would work. nerfer created his vertical barrier by pinching wide electrical tape in the middle to form the vertical barrier, with enough horizontal part of the tape left to tape the thing down. His basically looked like this from the side: l . You can see nerfer's photos here: http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/35892-glare-windshield-night.html