MFD issues on '04/'05 Prius

[Tempus]

I had mine replaced a long time ago under the 36K warrantee.

But, what makes me sadest about this whole thing is thinking about how many people who aren't Priuschat members have likely had $4,000 Hoovered out of their pocket for a repair that probably cost the dealership $300 and that should have been free to begin with.

Toyota does have a pretty good rep for owning up to problems, but I rank this up there with the engine sludge issue for bad PR.

[edselpdx]

Just an FYI... I thought this happened to me last summer, but it turned out to be a DICE iPod integration issue.... If you have a DICE unit, power the car off, unplug the DICE unit completely for a few seconds, and then reconnect. Both the DICE and the MFD worked completely normally afterwards. It happens to me every couple of months, and the DICE unplug trick works each time.

I know some folks have posted that they have "no DICE", so it obviously doesn't apply. Even the dealership was unaware of this combo causing problems.

[seeh2o]

Weird, I posted an update here earlier and it did not show up.

It took about 2 weeks for a replacement MFD to come in. I took it in yesterday and they replaced it for the $50 deductible. They were very cool about doing it after my extended warranty ended (I took it to the dealership about 100 miles before the warranty ended), they opened a ticket and kept it open even though the mileage went up.

Anyway, the invoice said that the MFD part was $437 and labor was $17.

The thing is, the smoke colored plastic below the MFD is now scratched and slightly chipped. I'm going to call and see if they can either buff it out or fix it.

My question is....am I being too anal expecting they should fix the chip/scratch they did while repairing the MFD?

[patsparks]

Originally Posted by seeh2o

My question is....am I being too anal expecting they should fix the chip/scratch they did while repairing the MFD?

No.

[bredekamp]

Someone should take one of these failed MFDs and replace ALL the electrolytic caps with expensive audio grade caps from Japan or the USA. Soldering and capacitors are the weak points in many devices today. Semiconductors like chips etc. very rarely fail unless they are abused by heat, high voltages or static. High temperatures from the car standing in the sun can cause badly made caps to fail, easy. If you block the air vents on a set-top box it's usually the caps that die and make the box fail.

Check the caps. That's my gut feel after fixing modules from BMWs.

How's the reliability of the 2006 MFD by the way.....

[relever]

Originally Posted by hobbit

Update: I fixed it! Details are here. Another addition to the
"teardowns" collection.
.
If I can find the difference between this one and my original that
shows the engineering change, I won't need to look at other units.
Hopefully it would be the same problem cause in all of them -- given
the frequently reported symptoms, it seems likely.
.
There's NFW this piece is worth $3000. It's about the same level of
technology as a modern PC motherboard, and what's that, a couple
hundred bucks these days?
.
_H*

Hi Prius-friends,

By the helkp of Prius-Freunde from Germany I got aware of Hobbit's findings: The cause of the MFD-break-down of the 2004/05 Prius around 60.000 km's. Since 9 months I'm troubled with the very same problem, my dealer was unable to give me any help.

Now with hte knowledge of you I'll try again to get the problem fixed - but same as with most of you, warranty just had expired.

Let's see how smart Toyota in Germany deals with the problem.

Thanks very much, most of all to Hobbit, without your help I'd not know how to deal with that problem.

Greetings from old Europe

Reinhard

[patsparks]

I have to ask Toyota dealer how my claim is going today. Car is 12 months out of warranty. If no luck I'll pull the MFD out and have an electronics specialist fix it using pictures from Hobbits work which is brilliant!

[richard schumacher]

Originally Posted by bredekamp

Someone should take one of these failed MFDs and replace ALL the electrolytic caps with expensive audio grade caps from Japan or the USA. [...]

Hobbit's work shows pretty convincingly that the problem was an error in the design of the solder footprint for a particular connector on one circuit board. See
Prius MFD
The circuit board was redesigned for '05 or '06, and these newer units do not have this failure.

[patsparks]

Is anyone else having trouble opening this link? http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/mfd/

[Skwyre7]

No.

EDIT: Obviously, I'm only speaking for myself.