It looks like this could be a lengthy job, I can't seem to find any YouTube posts of this being done, which makes me think perhaps it isn't done that much on a 7 year old Prius- yet here I am needing to change the lights. However, I will check to see if new lights work with existing wiring before taking off the Back Door Outside Garnish I was staring at this job with the back door trim removed and looking at those 10 bolts thinking that they should be removed, but it was getting dusk so I stopped. So the steps are pretty much 1. remove inside trim 2. remove bolts that hold the outside "garnish"/trim 3. remove the outside garnish/trim? This would be a good time to replace those clips- does anyone know the part number?
I don’t have 2 panels. I only have the one on the center for …I assume emergency opening of the latch.
I have a small 2" X 3" access panel on the inside of the hatch opposite about the middle of the license plate. I don't know what is under that cover. The license plate illumination, LED on my vehicle, is inside the exterior garnish/trim piece that gets removed per the above attached instructions. For the OP, are your bulbs regular filament?
No, they are LED. I believe you and I are in agreement on how they get removed, but it isn’t only by removing the exterior piece unless you are able to pull them out, I think they have to be pushed out from the inside.
That's a misstep. Gen 3 access panels: Maybe being LED, they figured they're more dependable. One or both burnt out?
Both- but it has 207,000. If they were on for all of those miles, it would seem like time to be replaced
My guide up there from Chilton's is correct in that you have to remove 10 10mm bolts from the inside and then pop off the exterior garnish.
Wow, that would be a time-consuming job just for some little light replacements. For the clips, they should be reusable if you are gentle removing them. I have two containers full of various plastic clips whenever I break one....can take a while of searching and testing to find the one that fits, though. (Best done at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee!) FWIW, you have to remove the front grill and panels in a Gen 2 Tundra just to replace the headlights. Sometimes you gotta wonder just what engineers were thinking!!
I’m not through with this, I keep struggling on getting these lights to work. I’m certain that the old lights did not work, and with a multimeter and basic AI to help guide me- the aftermarket ones I bought are functional, though I have never gotten power to them. Does anyone have a diagram or know how these should be wired? It appears the wires that feed into the two plugs have a positive , and a ground? And it appeared to me that the ground was just a wire that went between the two plugs. I tested the plug on the right and if I stuck the red probe into the power side of the plug and the black on a spot of unpainted metal on the hatch, I got about 13.7 volts when I turned my lights on. On the left I got next to nothing. So it seems like there was a problem with the power coming in from the left, so that’s why I cut these plugs. Now I have tapped into the power on the right and supplied power to the left- connected the two lights ground wire, and nothing.
