2014 Prius V Two..tech issues on instrument cluster. TECHNICIANS need to read...

Hey guys I work for a used car retailer and we've got a 14 Prius V Two. The maintenance light for the LOF stays on, will not clear. It' been diagnosed as a bad cluster, and we swapped one with another vehicle and that one would reset, as in when your going through the process it would start flashing the lines signifying it's resetting. So now we've had to send it to the dealer for a new cluster at an exorbitant cost, which is fine. The problem is they're telling us it require 4 HOURS worth of labor. We've already had the cluster in and out numerous times and it takes about 15 minutes and a few trim parts, HVAC ctrl head and it's out. The advisor will not budge because "That's what the book says". Well our issue is Toyota has screwed up. When you look up the Removal and Installation steps in Toyotas own shop manual it shows the complete dash, headliner, and all side trim needing to be removed. So they've goofed the repair instructions, and put the labor for the complete dash removal for the cluster, instead of JUST the cluster. When you click on cluster removal it hyperlinks you to a middle step in the dash removal repair instead of having it's own repair section separate from anything else but itself. Has anyone ran into that? What is TRUE labor for cluster removal and programming? This is the long (12 to 13" cluster) not the 6x6" screen. Thanks community hope you guys can help me out!

 

It was actually sent to said dealer with the necessary trim removed and the cluster just sitting in the dash, and explained to them to look at it because that's all we had to remove. I'm all for besting labor times but Toyota screwed the pooch on the repair instructions and labor time.

 

But did you actually have to strip it down that far? What's happened in our case was the repair instructions do NOT apply whatsoever. As previously stated it' got you take the entire dash out and headline. When all the steps truly are is remove hvac controls and a trim piece or two then the cluster brick has 3 or 4 screws holding it and it'l fall out. Fifteen minutes tops and it' out.

 

We had put it back together with another cluster that had the chip set swapped out that runs the maintenane reminder from a good cluster from a company that refurbishes auto electronics but it didn' work the way they had said it would so it was back together and rather than burn any more time on it we sent it to the dealer back together.

 

Does anyone here work at a Toyota dealer? I challenge you to look up the Remove and Install steps for the instrument cluster. And the labor time in your shop book.