Combination Meters that stop at 299,999 miles, Who's affected and what you can do about it.

I'm gonna get right to the point and try to keep this an easy read. Combination meters (odometers) that stop at 299,999 miles are annoying. The practical reason is because it makes it difficult to keep up with maintenance and if your Prius has over 300K routine maintenance is extremely important. The less practical reason (at least for me) is that you don't get the satisfaction of seeing how many miles your car has on it once you pass 300 K.

So who is affected?
This one is actually very straight forward. Toyota used two different combination meters on the Gen 2 Prius. The first style (I'll just call this the old style) was used on 2004-2005 model cars. Every 2006 or newer should have the new style combo meter. The major differences are that the fuel/odometer/PRND all switched sides and the READY light got relocated off of the meter on the new style. Here's a picture of both:



If you have an old style meter in your 04-05 Prius it will stop at 299,999. That's really all there is to it. We have tried to reprogram the old meters past 300,000. The memory takes and stores the new value but the processor will not display it. If you have a new style meter your good.

I don't like really long posts so I'm going to break this into a few. Stand by for more.

 

If your meter stopped at 300 K what are your options?

- If your staying with your old style of meter the only thing you can do is role the mileage back so that you can keep track of maintenance. You can do this by finding a meter from another car and putting it in your Prius or we can re program your odometer for you. Of course it becomes your responsibility to disclose the change if you ever sell the car.

- This brings us to our next point, Can a new style meter replace an old style meter? Toyota would say no. But actually you can.

We set out to find out if this would work, we took a 2005 Prius with 329,000 miles and a combination meter that had been stuck at 300K for over a year.



We then took a new style combo meter and programmed it to the cars actual mileage and put it in. It seemed that we were almost done but as soon as we plugged everything in the ABS light came on. That's weird.



Then when the car was turned on there were other lights on that made no sense. So we went for a drive.



As it turns out all of the wrong lights were coming on.

Here's a list of all the things that were not working properly:
-No right blinker
-A/C Auto button didn't turn any lights on
-No READY light
-Cabin Air Recirc button turns on the MAINT REQU light
-Front defrost turns the CRUISE control light on
-Rear defrost turns Icy Road light on
And
-When you turn the headlights on the rear defrost light comes on

Other than that everything worked great. Don't freak out over the triangle, I opened the door wile in drive.



So at this point it's obvious that the light cluster from the 2005 is not compatible with the new style of meter. Maybe if we take a light cluster from a new style Prius and put it in here that will work.

 

Making the new light cluster work in the older car.

- So we took the dash out for the 5th time. Here you can see that there are 2 ribbon cables that go from the meter down to the light clusters on the left and right.


We went ahead and removed the right hand cluster and laid it out to compare it to one of the newer style clusters.



Here they are. Notice the newer cluster on top has the READY light which is not present on the older style. Time to put the new cluster in the car and see if it works.



Yes, everything works perfectly, we have a READY light, the blinker works, and all of the buttons turn on the right lights. Everything looks great except for that TPMS light. What's that about? This car doesn't have a TPMS system, come to think of it I don't think any of the 04-05 Prius had TPMS systems. Time to take it out again.



Yup there you go, the old cluster doesn't have a TPMS light. I didn't catch that when we swapped it earlier.

 

How to deal with the TPMS light?

Well since the older cars don't have the TPMS system then we don't need the light.

A quick inspection of the board behind the cluster shows that LED251 is for the no longer needed TPMS light. Take it off!



That's easy enough.



So that's it, everything worked like it was supposed to. And now these Prius owners don't have to live with their old stuck odometer any more.

 

Here's the part where someone will get upset but here goes.

For any Prius owner with an 04 or 05 model car and an odometer that's stopped at 299,999 miles:

IF you want to fix your car I can ship you a new style combo meter that has been programmed to your cars true mileage and include a replacement light cluster that will make everything work properly. All of the meters are rebuilt and include a lifetime warranty.

Right now I have 8 of the light clusters in my shop but I would find more if I need to.

The price for both would be $150 which is fair to get your odometer issues resolved and be assured that your combo meter won't die in the future like so many do.

If you're interested or have questions feel free to PM me.

Matt

 

Mendel,
The odometer value is stored in a chip that's mounted on the combo meter. This is why you can go pull a meter from another car and then you'll have that cars odo value. It's also the reason why most of the eBay sellers list each meter that they have individually and it's respective mileage. It gives you the ability to pick the one that best matches your car and they get to list the same item 30 times in row. We program each meter that we ship so that it matches the car that it's going in.

So for your example car we would program a new style meter to 350,000 miles and ship it to you. You put in the meter and the new light cluster and your done, there's no programming or chicken dances required.

Matt

 

Yes but all odometers are rollable if you have the right tools. Rollable sound to illegal, I'm going to use programmable instead.

Most car makers use some form of an EPROM chip mounted in the gauge cluster to store the cars mileage. At least as long as digital odometers have been around. With things the way they are now days it would be hard to get away with re programming an odometer for the purpose of misrepresenting the cars true mileage. Every time you go and get your tires rotated or oil changed your cars mileage goes into a database.

Toyota or the manufacturer of this part did actually make it hard to get to the chips that store that data. We designed an adapter that allows us to get into a small space and connect to the chips and we wrote code that converts the desired mileage into a unique hex code that works with these boards.

The dealerships can't even reprogram these meters in house, they have to ship them to the vendor. I know this because prior to rebuilding them the only option I could offer my customers was a new part from Toyota for $400 + installation. When you order a new meter from Toyota you give them the odometer value and the VIN which they submit with the parts order. On one occasion a new meter came with the wrong odometer value so we had to wait 2 weeks for the dealer to ship it back for reprogramming.

Matt