The Car Care Nut is surprised a Gen2 is complicated after he removed the dash to change the ac evaporator. Good video shots of ptc heater and power steering motor among other things. When he was a Master Mechanic at a Toyota dealer he was not working on many twenty year old cars.
No surprise. We know the second Gen is complicated but indestructible. I bought mine brand new and after 19 years and over 200k miles still runs 100%. I have been lucky to maintain it with only minor repairs like water pump, inverter pump, 3-way valve, combination meter, bearing hubs and a HV battery rebuild. Plus a stolen catalyst but I haven’t dealt with anything more complicated like the video shows, evaporator, actuator, and ICE still fine. However now the value is $3k so if a big item repair happens I will think hard if I will attempt the repair DIY or just salvage the car.
Reminds me of when I was previously diagnosing my intermittent power issue. Which ended up being corrrosion in the drivers side iac3(iirc) junction. Thankfully the manual is well designed for troubleshooting. It's just time consuming. Especially when the immobilizer is nowhere near the diagram shown by toyota. Took me a couple days to find the stupid thing. Scouring the internet to eventually find one old post that mentioned it being stuffed behind the hvac unit. The amount of wiring and computers in the gen2 is ridiculous. I learned a lot but jeez it's quite complicated. I see why many shops avoid troubleshooting wiring issues and instead suggest a new harness and 20+ hour labor bill. That's the 'go somewhere else please' price.
The problem with this approach is it still can be an ecu or a device itself. It takes a really skilled electrical tech / mechanic / detective to find "wiring" issues without firing the parts cannon. One good example is the guy on the "Pine Hollow Diagnostics" youtube channel. The Car Care Nut gets it done as well but he is more likely to follow the manual which often fires the cannon.
Nearly every South Main episode these days is electronics troubleshooting: half of it looking at wiring diagrams and Autel diagnostics, then digging into rust/salt encrusted spaghetti. Lot's lof logic and sleuthing at play. One episode he tracked it down to some control module, out-of-production, and salvage yard replacement had to have firmware update to recipient car VIN, which proved insurmountable (even with $100+ USD subscriptions out-of-pocket), and his last recourse was to mail it to a "guy" that can open the case, micro-surgery something. Which "might" work. This was a typical up-state NY rust-bucket, might have ended up a stalemate, not sure. At one point he said (paraphrasing): you're never going to see these in a classic car show.
