Help!!! I shipped 04 w/ smartkey system to korea where my brother's gonna stay for 2yrs. Gas price there is ridiculously high. It finally arrived there after some 2months later but its missing all transponders. Any suggestion would be much appreciated.
Welcome to PC! I think you're probably going to need to provide a few more details (e.g. where the car was shipped from, the carrier, whether the fobs were shipped separately, et al).
This is not good if atleast one of the fobs is not found then you have to replace the computer around $3000-4000 You have to have atleast 1 fob to program more into the car.
Have him swim to Japan, walk up to the reception desk at Toyota HQ, buy one off the rack, and swim back to Korea. I hope you took a hammer to all the side panels, doors, front and rear... so that you won't realize how badly it was dinged to death while over there. I can't imagine trying to get out into traffic in South Korea.. I would have rethought that and learned how to do it with cab's, busses and trains.
The effort to locate the FOBs must be redoubled of you're going to have one very large, very expensive paper weight on your hands. Are there even any Toyota dealers in SK? If so, are any of them Prius dealers with Prius certified techs? If not, then you are in serious trouble unless you or your brother can figure out where to buy a brand new SKS ECU and then figure out how to install it yourself. Even then I think you have to be able to program the FOBS and that requires the THHT (The Toyota Hand Held Tester). I don't think that ECU actually costs as much as $3000, but I wouldn't be suprised if it was over $1000. You did a very bad thing allowing both fobs to be lost, they should have been shipped seperately or one at a time or just ship one or ship by FedEx insured or something.
Agreed. Why the heck would you ship BOTH FOBS with it? One could have been inserted in the ignition and the other FEDEXED. Now you're screwed.
I second this thought ! The only thing I could suggest is go back to the owners house and search his garbage cans because he might throw out the 2 smart key remotes since he no longer has his car.
Ha -- a carjacker has probably come to the experts to find out how to circumvent the fact he didn't get a key when he stole the car. Help him out guys!
yeah, it almost seems like a ridiculous idea to ship it from here. my guess its a car robber who wants to know whether someone on PC has come up with a way to break into the Prius / get into it without keys. Someone should tell this person that the Prius is not a car that can be easily broken into, if at all.
The only way to fix this is to get the main ECU and keys as a complete set. There is no way around this, unless you locate at least ONE of the original fobs. Nate
Hmm.. just signed up as a member.. and figures.. some pityful sarcastic ppl..some just wants to show off with very little knowledge.. and very few actually knows about the car.. First, I bought a used car with only one fob and I had to send it in the car. Second, There're certified Lexus(toyota) techs in Korea with toyota scanners. They're saying I have to send them a blank immobilizer with new keys that way they can program the new immobilizer. Third, I went to several Toyota dealer intown with the title stamped EXPORTED by U.S. Customs. 3 of them told me that they cannot do anything since the car is not here and I don't have any fob. One of them who was actually a tech before he became a service rep told me there's a way by using toyota scanner(by getting a code from a car by going into immobilizer function and use that code to get secure code from toyota) well, that's how he put it.. is there a real expert who can give me a real answer?
naterprius gave you a real answer, isn't that good enough? take it to your dealer. I personally don't like questions being accessible by google that can help car thieves steal our cars.
Ok. Real answer. The 2005-06 only have fobs. It's the 2000-03 models that have both an immobilizer and keys. So I'd say the techs in Korea are a little out of date. You'll have to buy a new ECU and new fobs and have them all programmed. Cost: over $1,000. It's too late to tell you you should never have only one set of keys for anything. I got two fobs with my car and still I bought and had programmed a third fob which is at my parent's house. Just in case. If *I* had bought a used car with only one key, the first thing I'd do is have another key made. In your case I would have bought at least one more fob, had it programmed and kept it with me. Because stuff happens, as you can see, and they lost the one and only fob that went with the car. And without at least one fob, you're out of luck. Now....was the car insured with the shipper? If it was....then they are liable for losing the fob and they must pay to have the car's ECU replaced and pay for a new fob to be programmed. Other than that....you are out of luck. Personally? I would never have bothered to ship a car to Korea, not for two years, not even permanently. You'd have done better to sell it here and then buy some "wheels that move" over there to use, then sell it before you come back. If you have access to where the car is....better do a thorough search of the entire interior in case the fob is on the floor and slid under the seat or something. Without that fob, you're out of luck. And if you find it....get TWO duplicates made.
First, you need to prioritize and, in that regard, you should have contacted the shipping company and inquired about filing a claim by this time. If NOT, that would be your very first step. Forget posting here and making inquiry about how to "fix it". Let the firm responsible for ensuring that the car arrived at its destination in substantially the same condition as when it left port worry about remedial action. Also, if you already have contacted them, did you get a response? What did they say? Interesting, also, that your subject line reads, in part, '...lost all fobs while it's getting shipped..'. I took that to mean there was more than one fob (either shipped with the car or separately). Now, however, you state you never had more than one fob. ????
i agree, tag, everyone keeps talking about how ridiculous this whole situation is, yet they keep answering him. at a minimum this is just documenting how to fix a car-jacked prius! the only good thing is they are also documenting it is NOT cost-effective to fix a stolen prius, but the whole idea of all this help on a 1-post wonder makes me very uncomfortable. i agree with tag and those above who said go to the shipper. otherwise go to your dealer. but just go away with this sort of question.
Wow, you've come to one of the friendliest forums I've every visited on the web and insulted the members in your 3rd ever post. Nice. Had you bothered to educate yourself on the subject you could have purchased and programmed a second remote prior to shipping...for safety. I won't slam you on that since I'm not sure I would have necessarily done that right off, but in hind site it would have been the smart thing to do. Perhaps the techs in Korea are all honest and have super secret techniques that the rest of us don't. But I'll tell you flat out that you're wasting your money if you send them blank fobs. The new fobs MUST be shipped and programmed to the new SKS ECU or they cannot be programmed. Trust whom you wish, but at almost $200 each for blank fobs I wouldn't be doing any 'experimenting'. It's highly unlikely that the techs there have any direct experience with this. Plus, did you actually talk directly to the Prius certified tech? Or some service writer who happened to be fluent in English? I am one of the few people anywhere to have to have my SKS ECU replaced. I know what happened to ME when we tried to program unmatched fobs to that new ECU--it didn't work at all no matter what they tried. That confirmed what we knew already from Toyota's own manuals. But, like I said, I'm just trying to show off with very little knowledge.
Honest or not, I think this whole thread should be deleted with a note. "If you lose all your fobs, call Toyota Customer Service". Not Priuschat
