Someone ran into me in a parking lot, and I just got the car back after $16K of insurance-paid repairs. While they had the car, the shop disconnected the 12V battery, so all my settings are lost. I can re-install them. What I don't understand is that the instrument cluster now says "Maintenance Required Soon." Since the car has only 7000 km on it, I assume that this message is just the result of some failure by the repair shop. What probably happened? Is this a true alarm, requiring service by someone who (unlike the repair shop) knows what he or she is doing? If this is a false alarm, is there an easy way to make the message go away?
It's just an egg timer tied to the odometer. It is pre-set to go off every n kms, not triggered by any specific fault or condition in the car. It's easy to reset (specific instructions are in the owners manual) and your dealer can change the value of n to whatever you like as a reminder for oil changes, tire rotations, or really whatever you want the reminder to stand for. The collision shop probably wasn't aware of it at all and likely didn't interact with it in any meaningful way. There are actually two of these- in a few hundred km the message should change to 'Maintenance Required' One reset procedure covers both.
That's interesting, a Canadian spec 5th gen, having the maintenance required warning. That wasn't the case with 3rd gen, nor 4th gen if I'm not mistaken. The first maintenance interval should be 8000 kms or 6 months, whichever comes first, and entails basically a tire rotation, nothing more. There may be mention of "visual brake inspection", which could amount to "uhuh, they're still there". Of interest: Toyota Canada used to publish a maintenance schedule, and for a few years it was actually readable. Feast your eyes: ^ I've attached a more legible pdf format. Has a second page, explaining "Oil and Filter Service" versus "Maintenance Service" This may be identical to the 5th gen schedule, which as of the 4th gen advent (2016~2022), had no maintenance schedule in the paper publications. Anyway, this is what you'll see now, in the Toyota Warranty and Maintenance Guide: ^ Underwhelming, eh?
A required soon message usually comes on about 500 miles before the actual interval mileage with these systems.
That is a 5,000-mi/8,000-km reminder that you reset after each oil change/tire rotation. The 12-V-battery disconnect has nothing to do with it. It is telling you that you need to take the car for a tire rotation (and also an oil change if you like) at 5,000 mi (8,000 km). You can reset it if you don't want to have the maintenance performed.
