combination meter repair - DIY

An

Thanks. I have put in for a price quote for 3 new vents, lets see what they say it costs.

On another front, does anyone have the pinout on the combo-meter? The one I have is from the non-NA version [removed inaccurate picture]

I found my own answer, it's in the Meter chapter of the repair manual, I had looked under instrument and other chapters.



And the pinouts:

 

I agree with the above, I have done this particular repair about 10+ times, so I have followed what you recommended, it has only been in the last 6 months that I noticed the accelerated deterioration of the plastic. However, I am mainly dealing with cars from California, Texas, and Florida which have much higher sun exposure (UV/Ozone) than other locations. I have called 3 junk yards in the area that have 2008 newly junked cars in stock, will see if they can retrieve (don't want to drive to 3 places and they be broken already).

 

I once was looking for an ignition wire standoff clip that had broken on a car I had, old enough the part was no longer sold. But I stopped at a dealership and the guy said "no problem, I think we have one of those as a parts car out back, that's probably on it." We went out back, popped the hood, and there it was! The exact clip I needed to replace my broken unobtainable one. In mint perfect condition. The guy pulled at it a little, not seeing how the retaining bit worked, said "wait just a sec", grabbed a big screwdriver from inside the service bay, broke the clip off and handed it to me.

 

That makes sense. My experience is from New England, which has seasons other than summer 75% of the time. Still worth a look at the junk yard as you may stumble on a car that was garaged or otherwise babied. Best of luck!

 

So, I'm wondering about your response. "Thanks, but I already have one just like that." Or, "Just what I need, two broken clips." Or perhaps something more creative.

 

I wish I had been more creative. I think I was completely without words for a moment, and then thanked him for the effort and left.

KInd of upset with myself for not managing to stop him in time. I think I started to say "oh, hey, I'll be happy to ..." and he was like "no problemo, I've got it" ... crunch.

 

Yeah, if you're anything like me, you're too busy thinking, "Is he gettin' ready to do what it looks like he's about to do?"

 

That's where I was exactly.

I've always figured those moments when tiiiiiimmme sllooooowws doooowwwn are so you can be super focused on the right quick reaction. But that time it didn't work out for me.

The other time I really noticed that effect was when we had a strand of electric fence that ran adjacent to a neighbor's chain-link fence, and I was leaning on the (very nicely grounded) chain-link, not thinking about it, when my midriff touched the electric strand.

Witnesses said I just flopped on my back, wham, like a sack of flour. From my perspective it took more like half a minute, but there wasn't anything extra useful about that, because I didn't get to spend the half minute doing anything besides thinking "wth?" and flopping on my back.

 

As an update, I decided to do a repair on my Combo meter while I had the dash out. Which was good as one of the caps 330uf had spilled its guts. I cleaned up the board and reinstalled, but noticed that my gas meter, mileage was messed up. So I read the Eeprom and saw that when I had disconnected the 12V it might have written to the EEPROM and shifted it by 1 bit. It took me longer to figure the pinout for the board than to reprogram the memory. Just glad I did not need to physically connect to the chip as it's buried under the display.

 

The necessary repair is to replace a capacitor on the combination meter circuit board. My son and I were able to do this successfully on my '06- it worked like a champ. It is not a small job to get the meter out and back in (took us a couple of hours), and the soldering is tricky and precise, but it is doable for a reasonably handy person.

This is an excellent description of how to r and r the combination meter:

And this is how to do the capacitor soldering part:

Steve

 

I just purchased a 2008 Prius in Jan. 2021 with this problem ... I fixed the problem and it's been working great ever since! The problem is definitely the capacitor circled in red ... Replaced it with a barrel 220uf capacitor, cost me $7.35!

Don't forget to clean your display screen and internal mirror before you reassemble!

 

I am thinking about doing this muself too. I found a place locally but $300 is a bit much. I have a question. I assume we need to disconnect a battery terminal before diassembling a dash board? Disconnect a negative terminal or/and postive? One video I watch, he disconnected a negative wire to the body but some of you disconnected a postive main connector? Does it matter?

 

Not all cars have an easily-unplugged positive main connector. Prius does, so that makes it the easy choice.

There's been a long tradition of advising people to undo the battery negative cable first, as that would protect you from throwing sparks if you started by taking a wrench to the positive terminal and you happened to hit something nearby while the battery was still grounded.

But that was for cars without a battery connector you could simply unplug, with no wrench, no fussing, no shower of sparks.

 

Thank you for our help! I have been forced to disconnect that terminal practically everyday since last week to reset/revive the meter. Simple thing to do but my understanding is that this method will eventually fail to reactivate the combo meter soon or later. So I have less than an ideal skill in terms of using a soldering iron but I will give a shot! I just hope I will not destroy all those plastic parts along the way. lol

 

The soldering is the EASY part ... Taking everything apart is the HARD (time consuming) part!

 

Hello Everyone,
Can someone explain in detail how to use this trick "FOB trick (Foot on the brake, lock, turn on lights, foot off the brake, lock) to get it back on"

 

There is no "FOB Trick" to get the combination meter back on. You have to either repair it or replace it.

 

What @VFerdman said. ^^

There is no "chicken dance" that will heal a blown out capacitor. And that's what kills the Gen 2 combination meter (CM).

 

Dash comes back when I disconnect the power connector at the battery every time. It goes out every few months and disconnecting the power plug for a few seconds being it back.

 

That is coincidence and has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is a capacitor on the CM board that goes bad. It's a 100uF electrolytic cap that is surface mounted and can be replaced with a 220uF through-hole part. There are pictures and discussion in this thread. There are also YT videos on how to get to it. It's not difficult, but a bit time consuming. Until the cap is replaced or the CM is replaced with one that has a good cap in it, it will keep happening. Disconnecting the battery does absolutely nothing to address the issue. If you think it helps, by all means keep doing it, but it is pure coincidence, trust me. You may as well reboot your computer and see if it helps your CM (it won't).