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Several Questions about my new 2011 Prius!

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by darkgiant, May 22, 2016.

  1. wrprice

    wrprice Active Member

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    The holes in the upper passenger dash are closer to the front passenger SRS air bag than my comfort allows. Granted, that's due to my uncertainty of the exact layout of any wiring or related components underneath that area beyond the bag deployment area itself.

    EDIT: On second look, maybe they're not so close to the air bag. Still, not a place I'd be drilling.
     
    #21 wrprice, May 25, 2016
    Last edited: May 25, 2016
  2. macman408

    macman408 Electron Guidance Counselor

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    A bit late for you now, but I got SLLC2 from my dealer for about $18. Normal price there is about $21, but the guy at the checkout next to me asked for a AAA discount or something like that, and my cashier decided to give the same to me too.

    I'm all for using Amazon, because it's easier than stopping by the dealer (which is only a mile away)... But in many cases, my dealer has had better prices than Amazon (or at least near enough to make no difference), and sometimes the only Amazon option is to buy from some sketchy third-party seller who may or may not send you the right part. Most recently, I got new wiper inserts from the dealer for that reason.
     
  3. DoubleDAZ

    DoubleDAZ Senior Member

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    Probably not while driving, but there are a number of people who run a business out of their vehicle with a laptop and even a printer. And there are more than a few who watch movies while driving. However, there are plenty of stands that bolt to the front seat rail without the need to mangle the dash, etc. I get saving money, but............ :)
     
  4. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    I've disassembled the front assemblies of both Gen2 and Gen3 Prius's, their is nothing wrong with the locations of where the holes were drilled. If somewhere were to happen the Air Bag ECU would start bugging out and throwing codes (which the car is clean as stated).
     
  5. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    Just because their is water in a headlight and/or tail light doesn't mean the car was involved in a flood...
     
  6. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    Lol, thanks for the response? I for now just put stickers over it, doesn't look even bad since those holes don't exist. Will order a DashMat eventually, but the stickers look great on the dash overall.
     
  7. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    I am really curious on what kind of business would require a person to need to have their laptop on a special mount while they drive, there are tons of coffee shops, heck, some folks go to coffee shops, order some "water" and sit in the shop for hours doing who knows what, lol. Or better yet, you can just buy a cheap tablet for watching movies or whatever (Amazon Fire Tablet ain't bad for $49 a pop). Lol, I have no idea how it is logical to put a laptop stand on car, but its whatever lol.
     
  8. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I think the airbag ECU does regularly test the resistance of the squib circuits, so it probably would code if you managed to drill right into the wiring or the squib. Those are small targets so it'd be remarkable luck to hit them.

    I doubt the ECU has any way of knowing you've drilled into the bag itself, or the structure. On the other hand, the bag's got big holes in it on purpose already (it deflates pretty quickly after use), so maybe a couple more small holes wouldn't change anything much (unless aimed just right to weaken a seam or something).

    I'd guess if you managed to drill into the squib itself, you wouldn't need a blinkenlight to find out you'd done it. :eek:

    Also I think the inflator on the passenger side is the hybrid type (it is in Gen 1 anyway, I think it's just because the passenger bag is big), that is, pre-filled with a high-pressure gas even before it's ignited. So you happened to drill the inflator enclosure you'd probably know that right away too, though I don't think the ECU would have any way to notice.

    -Chap
     
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  9. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    You are mostly right, at my local mechanic who works only on Prius's, he deals with a lot of government Prius's as they all have drill holes to hold their special computers, he actually showed me of a person trying to a DIY drilling and triggered the entire AirBag system. Positions were a bit farther back than mines, but it also used a pretty large drill bit and went pretty deep. In this case, these holes are barely half in inch deep, so you only are drilling into plastic.

    But one way to know if the airbag stops working would be to check the Airbag "On" and "Off" sign, it actually doesn't display anything when a passenger does sit, that's probably the best way to see without the entire Techstream software.

    EDIT: Than you'd have to check the wiring under the passenger seat, as that can be a variable that can cause the airbag lights to not even display On or Off being lit up.
     
  10. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    The wrinkle here is you have a sort of extravagant notion of what kinds of trouble the airbag ECU is even able to detect. Resistance of the squib circuit going outside the expected range, for example if you cut the wiring, disconnected or damaged the squib itself, and that's it. The ECU has no way to detect any other physical damage you might do to the airbag or inflator. Heck, as unscrupulous rebuilders learned long ago, it can't tell the difference between a working airbag and a resistor of the right value. It can't test the bag holds pressure, its only way to generate pressure is to trigger the inflator, which is a one-time-proposition.

    So outside of the narrow kinds of electrically-detectable damage the ECU has any way of noticing, there isn't any other kind of damage you could do to the airbag that the ECU would be able to tell you about. No warning light, no change to the passenger airbag light, nothing via Techstream. All those things depend on what the ECU can detect. Damage the bag in a way it can't detect (and that isn't obvious immediately), and the first sign won't be until the bag needs to work in a crash.

    -Chap
     
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  11. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    Hmm, thanks for pointing out the flaw in my post. I am only sharing what I saw from my experience and multiple stops at my mechanic, I never worked with the airbag ECU, so I don't know the schema on how it operates, but I trust your post.

    Either way, the entire point of this discussion was the areas of where the holes were drilled, and in this case, there seems to be nothing wrong with it (aside from the aesthetic of the drilling).
     
  12. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I guess the greatest concern (for the previous owner with all the stuff mounted there) is the one right in the owner's manual:

    nonono.png

    ... attach your fancy gizmo mount to the upper passenger dash, and it's unfortunate when the whole fancy gizmo, mount and all, becomes embedded in your passenger ....

    -Chap
     
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  13. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    Yeah, no clue what the previous owner was thinking. It was owned by a family with six different Prius's (all Gen3's) so I have no idea what was going on (they all had weird installments in the interior too). As for the passenger seating, believe me, when I was inspecting the car, it was impossible for me to even get inside to check it out, so that entire passenger seat was just impossible to sit in.

    I ended up finding a decent DashMat for $22 on Amazon, so went ahead and ordered that and am now done with it. I am thinking of possibly wrapping the cabin doors (carbon fiber?) and that should be gone too, probably ~$10-15 for the actual material to wrap it with.

    Still have to figure out the windshield wiper stuff, it hasn't stopped raining out here so its impossible to work on the car as it continues to pour.
     
  14. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Found it. :) His particular business in Indianapolis is called Breeden Revamped LLC, and the wider outfit he's an "associate of" is called "Dr. Vinyl / Doctors Touch". Notwithstanding the 'vinyl' in the name, the card says they can do plastic, vinyl, leather, upholstery. This is their website, complete with a "doctor near you" finder. Hmm, based in Missouri, seems to be better represented in east and midwest ... as far west as Nebraska, then gets kind of sparse ... Elk Grove, CA ... Wilsonville, OR ... kinda slim pick'ns out your way.

    As far as the parts that might be easy to replace ... honestly, some of them should be pretty easy. One example I thought I saw was some holes in the little rectangular panel under the "bridge" where the power outlet is ... 58818A in this illustration, it's just $20 spankin' new from a dealer, less from a recycler, and literally pops out, held by six plastic claws.

    claws.png

    as for the other locations where you've got holes ... weren't some on a glove box door? Probably also easy and not awfully expensive. Just a matter of looking at the diagrams to see what's easy or hard.

    -Chap
     
  15. darkgiant

    darkgiant Member

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    Thanks for that follow up, yeah unfortunately their is nothing nearby for me, but I can only imagine those guys charge a pretty hefty price.

    As for replacing the part, it obviously is more convenient, but it just doesn't make sense to drop $20, and than another $100 or so for the cabin doors and who knows how much the entire dashboard (probably north of $200). Maybe it is viable for someone who might want a 100% fix, but unless this was some sort of high class car (like a Porsche, M series bimmer, etc...) than I'd probably do that, it just doesn't seem like a smart idea to spend so much over drill holes. Maybe its just me, I am just a college student after all, lol.

    Anywho, thanks for that follow up, learned a lot from our discussion!
     
  16. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Understood ... just wanted to make sure you knew you had options (and remember you don't have to guess the prices, you can get dealer prices easily online as in the example I gave, and recycler prices will be less).

    Also, you can mix-and-match ... some panels might be expensive enough, or hard enough to replace, that you'd want to find some inventive solution, and some might be cheap and easy enough to just save you the trouble of inventing some way to fix it. It was long enough ago now I don't really remember what I considered an hour of my time to be worth when I was in college. Probably not as much as I should have ....

    -Chap