combination meter repair - DIY

I thought I’d post an update to my combination meter story. I installed the combination meter yesterday. I took my time and didn’t encounter any problems. I very carefully removed the dash vents and luckily they didn’t break. I followed the video from BoulderHybrids on YouTube. He really did a great job! When I tested the meter it worked fine so I put the rest of the dash back together and went for a drive. It didn’t take long before I noticed that the mileage on the odometer was stuck. I was pretty upset thinking I would have to take the dash back apart but I decided to first check and see what worked and what didn’t. To my surprise everything else worked. The trip odometer’s worked, and the maintenance reminders worked. So I think it will be ok. I was mainly worried about knowing when to do the maintenance. The mileage isn’t accurate anyway so I guess it isn’t that big of a deal. I set a personal reminder on the maintenance screen to let me know when the car reaches 300,000 miles. Just thought I’d post a quick update and thank everyone for all the replies and suggestions.

 

This thread is like 8 years old. My 2009 Prius with 204000 is now having these problems and wanted to know if anyone has update on these links to capacitors and wanted to know if the process in fixing the problem the same steps currently.
According to this tech you need to replace 3x capacitors and 1x motherboard regulator chip.
It seems the link for 330uF link is a link with a minimum order of 500x capacitor and I only want 2x just incase I mess up on my solidering. Can anyone shed some link to this old thread.

Thanks,

Kap-

 

Bro you have been on this site for 4 years still cant figure out the Search Forums?

https://priuschat.com/search/452932665/?q=combo+meter&t=post&o=relevance

 

Yes, why would it change?

There are other places you can buy in smaller quantities. Mouser is one that come to mind. There is at least one other that can be found in this thread. Just use the information in the product specs in that link and buy an equivalent component.

 

I usually look for parts in this order, but will admit it is mostly from habit: Digikey, Mouser, Newark.

 

The links give you the manufacturers parts number. Search those on digikey/mouser etc. If they don't have stock, the links have the dimensions, uf, voltage and temperature. You can try other manufacturers like Rubycon, United Cemicon- quality brands carried by digikey/mouser. Use digikey/mouser parametric search tool. If you are not in a big hurry, aliexpress or Electronic Components Distributor - LCSC Electronics will have something. The most difficult part of the job is getting the cluster out...

 

After 10 hours and a few broken vent trim. We have her back together.

SM-A536U ?

 

WOW!!! You must have had some struggles. But, in the end success!!

BTW, where I was working part time, that vent cover on the left of the MFD was called the "money vent." They almost always break or were already broken. I've had some of them crumble like sugar candy. There was one that I managed to get out unbroken and, as I held it in the palm of my hand, it broke into three pieces.

 

Wow, that was hellish! My 05 is a base model. Must have pulled the dash apart a half dozen times upgrading the MFD to add backup camera, no breakage. The instrument clusters for the bad caps and then upgrading the cluster from an 09 donor car. Had to pull that twice to get the odo chip programmed properly, that meant having to unsolder the VFD twice. The 09 MFD has bluetooth and a microphone needed in the overhead light console. I attempted to wire that up with the JBL stereo, also from the 09 donor, but turned out I needed the remote amp that would have been under the passenger seat. Thats where it will stay. Now I am waiting for a yabo cylindrical NiMh battery pack(over priced for such old tech IMO, $2KCAN). My Headway LiFePo4 pack cannot handle the regen current, over the last 3 years I've replaced about 10 cells. The fun never ends... cheers

 

so I was parked on the side of the road, a local officer writing me a speeding ticket, and I told him my dash turned black,
He laugh, English accent , and said “ keep your door open, put in the key phobe ,
turn light on , put them yo high beam ,
Press power button without touching the.brake pedal,
Let it boot up until it stops ,
Then press hard on the brake pedal and then press the power button . “
It took a second “ try” more coordination on my part, and giving time to boot before pressing the power button for the second time .
And my Prius Truck was back “ online”.

Then I accepted the $212 speeding ticket, at the officers suggestion, as the less $ way to go,
If he indicated the problem
With my screen it would have resulted in me having Toyota put in a new $6000 instrument cluster and take it back to the cop shop to prove it was fixed .
I got very good advice for & $212
Tom
Ps
The truck I was tagging was speeding ( his ticket was $600). We were in a double fine speeding zone.,
The officer drove a Prius in England

 

Hi there, first time poster here. Glad to see this thread active as I have run into some driving problems after attempting a DIY capacitor combi meter fix on my 2008 car with ODO which is now at around 100250mi. There were no issues driving before the attempt.

Here's what my friend and I did, starting from the DIY fix:

Unplugged the 12v batteries to be safe. Opened up the dashboard, broke a couple of vents, soldered a new 220uF capacitor, put everything back together while cracking one more side vent.

The car started up, dashboard was working, A/C was working, everything seemed fine—so we took it on a test drive just to be sure.

1 mile into the drive, the red triangle of death and check engine light came up. Tried to turn back home. Another half a mile in, the accelerator stops working. Thankfully we were in a small street and at the side, and AAA came to my rescue.

We tried to restart the car, and I could no longer shift gear to R/D, only P/N. Only once later there was a 4 second window we got the car in R, then nada.

The dashboard lights and touch screen display are all still working. No more red triangle now, but all the other warning lights are up. Touch screen display had a "Problem !" sign flash across

The A/C is also not working.

Liquid levels are fine. Oil was changed half a year ago. Battery under the hood was changed 3 months ago (it solved a previous red triangle of death).

I subsequently did a 12V battery test with the Display button/Headlight and it seems like the battery isn't great—around 11.9V without load. 11.4V with headlights on. I started up the engine, it went up to 14.0V, then after 10 seconds the engine disengages and the battery falls down to almost 9.4V (hovered around 11.5V on second try).

The coincidence is a little too uncanny—I really hope it has nothing to do with the combi meter fix. I've googled much but cannot find anyone with a similar issue so far, so I thought to post here.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

 

Probably best to do a real digital voltmeter test of your 12v bat rather than the "in car display" test. Also you can hook up any known good 12v bat to eliminate that possible cause (no need to pre-emptively buy a costly Toyota 12v bat. And a Mighty Max from Amazon/Google works fine and is about $80)
Pros check and change more than that one 220 cap.
Get and use techstream.
Good luck.

 

Welcome.

It's quite easy to forget to plug in something. Lots of connections to get right when you R&R the CM. But based on your symptoms, I think it's more likely to be a coincidence.

10 seconds is about the time it takes for the car to stop cranking the engine. When it gives up, it will throw a fail to start and/or a low power code.

The lights tell you that the car has trouble codes and it would love to tell you what they are if you connect a Prius literate code reader to it such as Techstream like John mentioned.

 

Thank you both for your kind responses and it is helpful to know that it’s likely a coincidence. What timing

I borrowed a friend’s OBD2 reader and I got P010A and P0131 on “pending” for the first read—O2 sensor issues. However, the second & third read said P3190 (no data) and P0A80 pending — the latter is a hybrid battery pack issue. Really hoping it isn’t! That’s gonna be really expensive.

 

How many times did you try to start it? If you do it enough, you can run down the HV battery.

From my reading, P010A is not a valid Prius code. (P010A and triangle of death | PriusChat) The P0131 is O2Sensor Circuit Low Voltage (Bank #1 Sensor #1)

But with that invalid code you got, I think you're using a cheap reader and getting bogus codes. I don't have time just now to go find the threads on code readers, but it should be easy by googling something like "priuschat code readers."

 

Thanks for your reply. I did try a few times (less than 10), and then a couple of times a couple of days later.

The reader did reflect that the supposed issue is the O2 sensor. Never knew about dud codes! Probably a cheap reader, I borrowed it from a friend.

I’ll get my car towed to an auto in the coming week. Wish me luck

 

I wouldn't expect that even cheap readers really deliver bogus codes all that often ... the rules for displaying a code properly just aren't complicated enough to get wrong much, and they're the same rules whether it's a code the reader knows about or has never heard of, so a reader should always be able to show you the code it received, even when it can't help you with what the code means.

The code a reader gets from an ECU is just a 16-bit number, and the only work to be done is to decode the top four bits into a P, C, B, or U and a 0, 1, 2, or 3, and the remaining twelve bits in hex.



Not that I've never heard of a reader doing that decoding wrong—there was an old version of the Dr. Prius app that had such a bug—but I don't think it's very common.

Another possibility could be that the Prius ECM has buggy firmware that might sometimes return a P010A code even though it makes no sense for a Prius. That you could find an older existing thread about the same code also makes me wonder about that. Being a P0 code, standardized for all makes and models, we can look up what it would mean, and it would be a code about MAF sensor B in an engine with more than one MAF sensor. That isn't a Prius, which has only one, but if some of the Prius ECM firmware was copy/pasted from another ECM and nobody noticed that code left in it, maybe there could be some unexpected logic path that triggers it.

Just this month there was a different example of that sort of bug, where a code unmentioned in the manual was seen, apparently from the airbag ECU, and didn't even make sense as an airbag code (those should all be B codes, and this was a P0 code that's supposed to be about an oil temperature sensor), but there was also a thread in another forum where somebody with a 2010 Camry saw the same thing. An airbag ECU shouldn't be giving any codes that start with P, but nothing really stops it, if there's a little typo in its firmware somewhere.

 

I had that P3190 fault code and engine wasnt starting, just MG1 turning the engine for 5 sec and turn off.

It was a water that goes in connector on RH trunk panel, next to the hybrid fan. 2 wires from 4 corroded, one is for fuel pump and other is for hybrid battery fan. That school cost me 200€. But im smarter now

 

Can someone please inform me if the gen 2 capacitor issue and repair the same as for the gen 3? I have the same issue on a gen 3 but can't find any information for it in the gen 3 forum

 

There is a very professional company in Texas who does these - contact Matt at Texas Hybrid Batteries. He has told me that they check and replace much more than this one capacitor. He will be able to tell you what is applicable to your year and model.