2010 Gen 3 Prius Clock Spring Replacement

Is there something about your 2010 that means you can't get to the 12 volt battery the same way the rest of us do? You lift out the big center deck board, you lift out the storage box, you lift out the small passenger-side deck cover over the battery, et voilà, there it is. You can also pop out the small plastic cover to the rear of it, for easier access to the negative terminal.

If you look at your steering wheel, you should see two threaded holes, one on either side of the shaft. Those are threaded for M8x1.25 bolts.

A "steering wheel puller" is a little tool that looks like a metal H-shaped bar with a bit pointy-ended screw in the middle. You get a couple M8x1.25 bolts and thread them through the ends of the H down into the holes in the steering wheel, so the big center screw ends up over the end of the shaft. Then you tighten down on the center screw gradually until the wheel comes loose with a big poink.

You don't need any special tool for putting it back on ... just be sure you made match marks on the wheel and shaft before you pulled it, be sure you put it back on with the marks matched, wiggle very gently back and forth to make sure it feels like the metal splines are lined up, and torque the nut back down carefully to the specified torque, using a torque wrench.

Some people report success without a steering wheel puller, just by shaking/banging/yoinking on the wheel until it comes off. I don't recommend it; those splines between steering wheel and shaft are one of the last parts of your car you want beaten up/rounded/flattened in any way. Any of your friendly local auto parts stores should have a steering wheel puller and M8x1.25 bolts. (Those are the same sized bolts you'd use for removing the brake rotors, by the way.)

-Chap

p.s. cheap eBay versions of real parts seem to be a real phenomenon these days. I was able to get door lock actuators for my Gen 1 for around $17 each, and the second one I bought actually worked and contained all its parts.

The most plausible explanation I've heard for this phenomenon is that there are factories that actually do make parts on contract for major names. They have all the tooling set up for making those assemblies, and they also know just how to scale back the quality control to make cheaper versions of the same parts. Or they can just go on eBay to sell batches that failed the major-name client's quality standards. If you're looking for a part that you are well equipped to test on the bench before you install it, and you're willing to put in the time and effort to buy possibly more than one cheap eBay part, test, and find a good one to use, and your time is worth less than the price premium of the dealer part, you can save money that way. If you're not set up to effectively test what you're buying before installation, it's more of a gamble.

And while it's pretty easy to test for functional problems (like the copper contact left out of that first door actuator), it's also possible the cheap versions scale back on materials or construction details important for long-term wear, and that's harder to test for, and a clockspring gets a lot of wear....

 

I was able to remove my steering wheel by just pulling it. But are you sure you need to? There are electrical connectors that run through the steering column to the wheel controls. Maybe that connector just came loose.

 

Just the plastic shrouds above and below the steering column, if you haven't already. You'd need them off to unplug the spiral cable anyway (the connectors in question are the ones between the stationary half of the spiral cable and the rest of the car).

If I remember right, there aren't any screws holding the shrouds together, just bendable claws in the plastic in a few places. The repair manual shows where. Two of them are behind the steering wheel. The manual actually shows removing the wheel to get at those, but if you're feeling lazy you can just turn the wheel a fractional turn left, then right, to get access to each of those two claws.

-Chap

 

I don't know what you've done so far, but what you do is disconnect the negative battery ground first, so the airbag doesn't accidentally deploy in your face. Then, you remove the two small access panels on each side of the steering column. Use a soft plastic pry tool and not a screwdriver, because the plastic is soft and easily scratched. Then you'll use a screwdriver to unhook the spring clips which hold the airbag in place. With the two spring clips unhooked, the airbag will easily come loose and tilt forward, revealing the electrical contacts and the nut which holds the steering wheel on.

EDIT: Ok, now I watched the video you linked, which shows this. For some reason, he didn't pull the airbag, which is very easy. There's an
Orange and a Black connector on the back of the airbag. All you have to do is slide the small yellow locking tabs on those two connectors, an then they come right off of the airbag. Now you can get in there and work and figure out which of those cables was binding. Or, you can loosen the nut which holds the steering wheel and pull it off, if you want.

 

Nothing you see within the steering wheel behind the airbag will be what's binding, because everything you see there is plugged into the front face of the spiral cable (clock spring) assembly, which moves with the steering wheel (that is, in the steering wheel reference frame, they're all stationary).

If you're looking for connectors to check for bad connections, sure, you've got those, and also the ones on the rear, stationary, face of the spiral cable, which you can get to by removing the column shrouds. Those won't be the source of a binding sound at all, because they're stationary in the reference frame of the rest of the dash.

The component that sits between those two reference frames and handles the motion is the spiral cable. If there's a cable making a binding sound or wearing out from motion, that's the one.

-Chap

 

Sound like you are on the right track.

This reminds me of a story involving a couple of rug rats who kept dropping coinage in the gap between the steering wheel and the column, which over the weeks/months filled up the shrouding, their parents couldn't figure out what was wrong with the steering until one day someone finally hit the jackpot.

 

Give us a photo or two?

 

I never tore mine down this far. Uploading the pictures is a great favor to the community.

 

In your photos with the wheel off and the ribbon cable dangling down, you can see two small, rectangular holes in the plastic column shroud, one on either side of where the column comes through. Those are the locations of the two front plastic claws holding the shrouds together. A small screwdriver pushed gently into each hole is all it takes to release them. The ones on the sides are just released by pushing in the right direction, as shown in the manual, and then if I remember right, on one or both shrouds there's a pair of claws in the center that clip onto a feature of the steering column.

The Toyota manual shows removing the wheel any time you want to take the shrouds off, just so you can get to those two front releases, but really all you need to do is turn the wheel to one side or the other, and you can get to them, one at a time.

That should really never happen. Usually wheel puller sets come with an assortment of bolts you can try; are you sure you used M8 x 1.25? Some of them come with an assortment of bolts not including M8 x 1.25, and you just need to go pick up two of those at the hardware store. That's the same thread that's used to remove stuck brake rotors, so good to have a couple around anyway.

If there's enough metal thickness in that boss on the steering wheel, you might consider Helicoil-ing it back to M8 x 1.25, to make sure the next attempt to remove it goes smoothly.

-Chap