Hello, I am a very new Prius '06 owner. Bought from Longo Toyota. Silver Package 8. I have a question. At night, there is a severe reflection on the windshield right at vision level. It comes from the dashboard. The one that contains the speed, etc. Just an inch or so think green glare that impedes night vision. I tried the dimmer, and, one night/morning it worked to dim the display. Today, however, this morning, the central panel and radio buttons would dim, but not the main dash display. Tonight, I went out and tried it again, and all the interior lights dimmed. What am I not doing right? Mike Tichon
I get the same thing... Someone suggested it was the edge of the display that was reflecting, not the display itself (it's like a green line a few inches long right?), and they're right. Other than that, I have no idea what the issue may be. As far as I know, the dimmer works precisely the same, day or night, and dims bother the speedo and MFD. Of course, I have an '04...
I am talking about the display that contains the speedometer, not the central LCD screen. Mike Tichon
Yes, it is the green line. I wonder why sometimes I can dim the display and virtually eliminate the problem and other times not? Strange. I am not a safety nut or anything like that, but I think I will find out how to report the issue to the company/NTSB Mike Tichon
The dimmer only controls the speedo brightness when the position and/or head lamps are on. If your lights are off, the speedo will always be full brightness.
That was me. I believe that the green line is a reflection off the smooth 1/2 inch wide bezel around the glass of the speedometer projector. It sounds like Mystery Squid has confirmed that. If you reach up along the dash and into the hole where the speedometer projector is, you will feel a smooth bezel down in the hole, before your fingers get to the projector glass. If you do this at night, you will notice that your fingers obscure part of the reflection when they are over only the bezel. I usually don't notice the reflection, so I haven't tried this, but my guess is that you could attach a thin strip of black felt to the bezel using double sticky tape to get rid of the reflection. The black felt would not be as reflective as the smooth bezel and should eliminate the reflection all together. Since the bezel and projector glass is down in a hole in the dash, you probably wouldn't even see the felt.
I just dimm it and the reflection goes away. You have to have the lights on to make the dimmer work. Also, if you want to dimm just the dasboard and not the MFD go to screen settings on the MFD after you dimmed the dashboard and click Day Mode button. The MFD will be at full brightness and the dashboard will be dimmed
This, I believe is true (Marlin seems in agreement): the speedo display isn't actually being displayed AT us like we see it. It's a mirror that is reflecting an image that is being shown from below the display that we see. So when the numbers and being shown UPWARDS towards the mirror, some brighter light shines around the speedo hood and is reflected off the windshield. Why has someone not invented a hood cover to enlongate the speedo hood? This seems to be a pretty obvious and surefire way to fix this problem and I know EVERYONE has probably experienced this annoyance. Or is Marlin correct in saying that we only need to add a non-reflective material to the edge of the projector or where ever he was talking about?
I to would like to add that I find this bothersome. When I first picked up my car, I thought the green line I saw in my line of sight had something to do with the new HID headlamps. I've never had them before, so I didn't know what to expect. I then learned that it was the reflection off the speed display area. We must think alike because I too put my hand up there and learned how the diplay was just being reflected from below. I turn the dimmer as high as it will go before it clicks into the hi setting and then added brightness to the MFD. This seems to help. Does anyone know if turning up the brightness can cause burn in of the LCD screen?
I don't know, but there's been a suggestion to add a strip of black felt around the opening to make it a bit smaller. OOPS, I didn't notice that Marlin already made the suggestion.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mtichon @ Dec 13 2005, 08:54 PM) [snapback]173190[/snapback]</div> I get the same thing on my '06. I should try the black strip of tape method, but I'd really rather not have a thick piece of tape on my dash... Has anyone called the dealer to complain about this? Maybe its a faulty part or the mirror is somewhat off? I might try and call the dealer when I get back from vacation next week and I'll report back if i hear anything.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(puppetmasta @ Jul 11 2006, 03:42 PM) [snapback]284653[/snapback]</div> If it's faulty, it's pretty common. I had the glare too, but I stuck a thin piece of wood (I figured it wouldn't sag over time) over the opening to make it smaller. I have a dashboard cover, so it was easy to put the wood strip between the cover and the dash. Stopped the problem right away.
