Combination meter and trying to work with Toyota

Hello,

My combination meter has been getting flakier and flakier. I'm in a warm climate, and I thought from previous posts it mostly seemed to happen on cold days, but I can confirm that even on 90F+ days that my combination meter doesnt always start. unplugging and replugging the battery does seem to temporarily fix it, but is obviously annoying.

I contacted Toyota and let them know I have a TSB document number of what I know they need to do trying to figure out how much it would cost me to fix, and they were saying upwards of $1000, but that they wont give me an actual price until they do their own diagnostics to confirm the price. I don't want to go pay $100 to find out they're going to try to charge me $3k (or even $1k...) to fix it.

It's an '06 Prius on it with 224k miles on it. New 12V battery installed by me last year, and a rebuilt/reconditioned hybrid battery installed by hometown hybrids (in Texas) in 2015. This toyota dealership replaced my evaporator core a year ago and didn't reconnect my FM tuner, and then also replaced brake actuator under an extended warranty about 7 months ago.

I have not ever taken the dash out of a vehicle before, and it's my daily driver, so repairing it myself seems intimidating. I was hoping to get a couple more years out of my Prius, but at some point I got to decide if the repair cost is worth it. So I come to y'all asking for any advice or guidance on is it worth it to investigate putting in a new combination meter myself, trying to get Toyota to give me a better idea on cost (and/or cheaper), or bite the bullet and keep it around for short trips but recognize it may not be my daily driver anymore. Reselling isn't really an option to me since I don't think I could get much out of it (12 yrs old, 224k+ miles, hood was chipped away at driving behind some kind of rock truck on a highway, and the trunk handle is JB welded on to it).

 

That is a great link. Other posts on this forum I've only seen suggesting ebay or junkyards to get combination meters, but kind of wanted to keep all my hard-earned miles on the odometer.

I watched a couple of videos on taking out the combo meter, and I have a weekend in a couple of weeks that I should hopefully have at least one full day available. I will go that route and follow up in here with the video links I used and what tools I needed handy for anyone in the future.

Thanks!

 

I'm in Houston

I actually just paid to have the combination meter sent to me today. I'll be attempting to install it this weekend

 

Got my part in from Matt, and used this video

Took me about 90 minutes, and was really straight forward. Didn't feel great about changing out the board in the humidity of Houston (did it in my garage), but no major issues. Only thing that was really an issue was because I was an idiot and tried to remove the bottom panel on the driver's side and was confused as to how to take the hood latch off the panel. I eventually realized there was no reason to remove that panel from the vehicle and could just leave it hang there.

My vent covers (the silver trim around the vents) were previously cracked, so they're in a little worse for wear now after prying them off and putting them back on. But the vents themselves are all fine still.

Had a great experience with Texas Hybrid batteries.