2008 Dash goes dark and engine won't shut off

Plenty of posts on the gen2 combo meter. Have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

most of them are issue with the capacitor, I did replace one of them and it involves removing the dash.

 

mine did that too, in july, i took the meter out drove it to west va and a guy soldered a new cap in while i waited i took it home installed the meter and no issues since then

you know its the cap if the car while in ready has no back up camera and the trunk wont open anymore, take it out of ready, and the trunk works, the cam and trunk rely on the cap

west va charged me 20 bucks

 

For a temporary work around. Turn the headlights on high beam, then put the fob in the slot, then press the start button. The high beam indicator light uses the power stored in the cap that the resistor won't dissipate because it is just old .... or the power going back into the system recharges the cap because it no longer holds a charge .... two different stories as to why the problem happens.
Our '08 ex taxi Prius is a pain in the butt for doing this at the most inconvenient time, but with 750,000 kms on the clock now, I'm not sure I could be bothered to go through the whole dash removal and reinstall ..... so we discovered this trick and that seems to work ok for us. It does help if you turn the headlights and high beem on before you turn the car off as well and only turn them off after you remove the fob.
The really annoying bit besides no speedo, is the odometer doesn't register either, so our 750,000km is really a lot more than that, but who cares, the km left before needing to refill doesn't work and the fuel gauge doesn't work either, and that is a real pain when you have an hrs drive home up the big hill out of Adelaide, and you can't remember what the fuel gauge read when you parked .... so to be on the safe side you are at the mercy of the price gougers close to the freeway entrance ... put 30 ltrs in and realise you had enough to get home where the fuel was cheaper .....

T1 Terry

 

Side question
A failing capacitor affects the hatch opening? Is there an interlock or something?

 

I haven't dug through the entire "door lock" section of the service manual. The main body ecu handles the lock and tailgate controls. I am guessing that the body ecu is programmed to not allow the tailgate to release unless it sees a vehicle speed signal of zero (or vehicle in Park?)

If the CM is offline, then it can't process the speed signal and send it out on the data bus. No VSS at all would have the body ecu default to no tailgate release. That would be an electronic interlock. Don't know if it also affects the "shifter" signal (aka PRNDL).

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This was one of the first things I repaired on my 2005 gen 2. I got a guy on E Bay to repair it and just watched this video to remove and install. No big deal.

 

I dont know, but something else also didnt work, I think the electric mirrors