TSB Released on Fuel Gauge Innacuracies

TSB

They will be replacing both items this Friday. The service department has told me it will only take 4 hours.

 

well, my car sits at the dealer waiting for the computer/gas gauge to arrive and i'm driving a scion Xb. for some reason i feel no trepidation at all at letting the wrench manhandle my wonderful car...perhaps i'm having a spiritual experience at letting go. the scion is not as much fun as i thought, nothing next to our prius, IMHO, tomorrow, i'll trade it for a camry, if they're not done...they did call today just to update me that they're on the case.

 

one of the reasons i'm having the tsb done as we "speak" is that i've only gotten over 7 gal. into the car twice in 8 months and that sucks!

 

i sure hope not. as this is an aftermarket fix or a quasi recall thingy, i would have to assume that if you are outside the applicable range that there is nothing to fix. iow, you already have this thing they are talking about.

maybe what we need is a method for verifying that we do have this?

 

Evan said it all. If you have any doubts in your mind, hold off, the TSB is not a required fix. If you have a problem that it covers then at your discretion have it repaired. I'd wait till at least November and see what all the posts on the fix say. If it repairs a defect that you have, get it done. By November all the bugs doing the job will be reported and you'll have good idea if you want to chance it or not.

 

umm well, my car supposedly has this fix already, and i must say that i dont really have many complaints as to how it works, but it is not any more linear than any other gas gauge ive seen.

for a while i tracked how far i got on each bar to see if i could discern a trend. (i assumed the first and last bar would go the furthest like any other gas gauge) but i encountered problems. such as bars disappearing over night. that happened to me nearly every day, making it tough to nail down when the thing disappeared and made me think that the gauge has to do some settling to work hence the "corrected" reading after sitting for a period of time.

i guess i just need to drive till i see the blinking bar or something. ive only gone to one bar once.

and as far as programing the new computer for existing odometer readings, i would think that it would not be done by hand but would be done by the old odometer when the switch takes place making an estimated total mileage submission by the end user unneccessary.

 

A call from Toyota

Well sure enough I had a call from someone higher up at Miller Toyota telling me that they are going to order the parts and they'd call me as soon as they came in. The funny thing is that they made it sound like it was all the factory's fault. According to the story Miller tried to get me the parts and the factory said I didn't qualify, but Miller went through all of the paperwork and said that I did qualify. They have faxes from the factory to prove it but they are going ahead and ordering the parts anyway. Hey as long as I get it fixed I'm happy, but I would wager that corporate Toyota called Miller Toyota and told them to get it taken care of.

Rick did a nice job of summarizing the problems and I agree with him that one of the things that really bugged me was that I would regularaly go 550 miles on the '02 without the low light on, yet on the '04 it would come on at 370 (or even less!)

 

No Rick, I'm not taking my car until the parts are in. That was one of my big complaints. The first time I had called to make sure they had the parts and was told they did (obviously a lie but this is why I called again and spoke to the "prius service rep" before I brought it in just to make sure.) I think it is absolutely a waste of everyone's time (and Toyota's money) for me to take the car in for them to "check it out." Miller has done all of the service on my car before and had the VIN number on record plus I had called Toyota earlier in the year to voice the problem so they had it on record. If I hadn't complained before then I would have taken if they requested.

 

I fall in the VIN range as well. I'm gonna get it fixed as soon as this huge hurricane passes. assuming of course there is a prius left.

 

A reply from Toyota

After another discussion with the my service people who really did their best to try and convince me that the fuel gauge TSB was not going to solve my problem, I decided to try to find someone at Toyota that really knew what the TSB was for. I dug up an e-mail of a very knowledgeable Toyota rep/engineer I had met at the Engines Of Change tour that Toyota had put on for the Prius Pioneers last September. His reply was:

"My colleague spoke with our technical services group (PQSS) and they
believe this TSB will resolve your problem. Of course, it's impossible to be 100% sure without seeing your car in person but we suspect this will take care of things."

This is good news! The parts have been ordered for me and should be in next week. Thanks Toyota.

 

Fuel Gauge on Newer 2004 Prius

I picked up my new priur (Tideland #9) 10 days ago. The first fill-up took 9.99 gallons (I had to keep clicking the handle to get it that high -- it wanted to stop at about 9.94). The vehicle had travelled about 445 miles at that point. Seems like the fuel gauge is pretty close to accurate

 

considering the hassles that seem to be needed. i would not recommend the fix. i supposedly have the fix and it the gauge still exhibits a lot of the symptoms that people here seem to think will be fixed.

such as

inconsistant readings
bars disappearing when car is shut off and restarted.
2 bars disappearing nearly at once.

and so on.

maybe what you guys without the fix are experiencing is simply much more severe than what im seeing. but to be honest with ya, i dont think it is. i must say that i dont have the overwhelming urge to get 600 miles per tank ful. (considering my other car barely got half that much, i feel blessed as it is.)

as far as i can tell the blinking bar starts when the tank is at ¼ a tank. so that equates to an additional 100-150 miles of range. my corolla had a big red "fuel" light that comes on at about the same time. so i consider this par for toyota. only thing is, the corolla also had a very accurate analog gauge also so a much safer driving range can be experienced with minimal risk.

i think instead of getting the fix, one should set the B trip and go 100 miles when the last bar starts blinking and hope the meter isnt lagging (evidenced by bars disappearing when car is shut off and restarted)

i guess what we need is feedback from those who got the fix on the before and after performance.

 

from the readings I gave in a thead linked below, my gas gauge will start blinking as early as 8.6 gallons, and as late as 10.66 gallons.

See the excel spreadsheet attached on this thread:

http://priuschat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?...4088&highlight=

-m.

 

wow that is a range of 100 miles. that is near the ¼ tank ratio. its too bad that toyota didnt institute a dual range fuel gauge with concentration of the accuracy in the last ¼ of a tank.

after all, its a digital gauge. would it be so tough to double the data points?