C1513 Code Torque Sensor Issue

Get the Bentley repair manual and do some heavy reading.

 

The steering rack lives on the "engine cradle"/lower suspension support and it all had to be removed to get the tranny out. So the electrical connections to the steering torque sensor surely got unplugged, and the contacts after 6 years may have been a little grimy, or they could have gotten a little grimy in the shop, or not plugged back together quite right.

My local electronics shoppe stocks a spray-can chemical called Jiffy Bath, a contact cleaner that leaves a protective and lubricating film. I couldn't begin to list all the "dead" electronic devices that I've resurrected by taking apart all pluggable contacts, hitting them with Jiffy Bath, re-plugging/unplugging/re-plugging them a few times, and trying again.

The torque sensor depends on sensing a variable resistance, so getting an iffy connection at any of the plugs they had to disconnect would definitely give you grief.

I suppose it's also possible that they actually damaged the torque sensor inside the steering gear itself - but I would certainly try the contacts first.

There was a service campaign for a known issue where the torque sensors in steering gears with a certain range of serial numbers did go bad. I don't know if your gear is in that range. Even if that happened, if there seemed to be any way to disassemble it enough to reach the resistive elements inside, I would try hitting them with - you guessed it - Jiffy Bath. I very successfully repaired a dying intermittent-wiper-delay knob that worked on pretty much exactly the same principle and had gone bad the same way. But getting to the steering gear for anything beyond cleaning the plug-in connectors would probably require dropping out that lower suspension assembly again, which looks like a PITA (I've never done it yet).

You can get the Repair Manual and the Electrical Wiring Diagram in a couple of ways: 1. at techinfo.toyota.com by paying $10 for a day of access and downloading as much as you can through a really hellish web interface of buggy JavaScript, or 2. calling 800 622 2033 and ordering them as nice books.

Hope this helps!

-Chap

 

If a connection with the steering ECU is loose or corroded the above may certainly help. As far as improving the function of the potentiometers inside the torque sensing system, I have been 'in there' and they are not accessible without damaging during disassembly. Not an ideal serviceable design (understatment).

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for those potentiometers to partially fail in 2001-2002 Prius. So focus first on ChapmanF's idea. If you eventually determine that the steering has failed, (a) $3000 may not be the lowest dealer-installed price (b) Toyota's 'hot line' may be willing to negotiate cost sharing (c) the salvage dismantlers will sell you the entire power steering assembly from a crashed one (ideally, 2003 with rear only damage).

 

I do not know who is good. LKQ online puts the most Prius stuff up on ebay (often including steering assemblies). Google their competitors (as if you didn't know how...). In the ideal case, more than one is available, and the merchants would compete in terms of price, shipping and warranty term (if any?). Seems like the ebay price is about $500.

It might be tricky to get that installed, if the Toyota shops say no. I reckon Art's in Berkeley would do it, but that's a road trip north.

For now I'd rather work on the assumption that it's fixable along the lines of Chap's ideas. Good luck.

 

Look also in the Repair Manual for a procedure to reset the steering ECU's idea of where "zero" is on the torque sensor. Even if nothing else happened, an electrical connection that was undisturbed for 6 years, then unplugged and reconnected, probably has changed the circuit resistance a bit and would make that calibration necessary.

And the manual has some tests you could do with a voltmeter if the simple plug-cleaning doesn't do the trick.

The recalibration procedure can be done either with a Toyota Hand-Held Tester (easy but only practical if you have one, which probably means you're a dealer), or without one, by a carefully executed sequence of shorting pins 13 to 4 and 14 to 4 on the diagnostic connector while watching a blinkenlight (which you have to supply, connecting it between a ground and pin 7 of the 10-pin connector on the ECU). I won't even try to repeat the details from the manual - there are a lot of them, and you'll want to follow them very attentively.

Almost all the other ECUs can tell you things (without the Toyota scan tool) by blinking some existing light on the instrument panel when you activate a test mode; for some reason the steering ECU is the one where you have to hook up your own light before you can look at blink codes. :huh:

-Chap

 

Hi! It’s been a wile since this thread was written, but I have same error code.

I own a 2004 Corolla CDE120 1CDFTV D4D 2.0 116HP.

Replaced the steering column by a used one, now I get this error code.

Before replacing there was no error code because it was also working.

I already cleant the pins with a electric connections cleaner, but still no connection between steering column and EMPS ECU.

 

There are troubleshooting procedures in the Repair Manual (more info) and, in a case like this, working through them is probably in your future.

Coming back around just for thread-completeness to tochatihu's twelve-year-old comment on

I ultimately got curious enough to buy a cheap one from a salvage yard and disassemble it, and the secret is just to pry the wedge out.

At some point I heard that Cardone was selling remanufactured units, so they must have found the secret too.

 

Thanks for your reply.

After posting here I found out the right part of the repair manual.
For my car manufacturer(TMUK) it is necessary to connect ODB2 tool to reset torque sensor and then set the zero point. Other corolla models(TMC manufacturer) can be set without scan tool following the repair manual instructions, but not mine. I own teachstream but it seems that is not the right diagnosis tool for this, I have to talk to someone with the right tool to solve this problem.

 

This would not help in my case, my steering column was looseness or roominess (not sure wich word is right in English), I changed 4 front bearing in 100000km! I asked for the steering column replacement price and refused to change it, now I changed it for 76€ but have to pay for resetting ECU and set the zero point, I guess I’ll pay another 50€ more or less hopefully,

 

In case someone gets here after me, after replacing steering column it is needed an alignment, and after that reprogramming EMPS with the old and new steering column code