First Real Problem

I'm not sure if this belongs in Troubleshooting or Audio & Electronics, so I'll post it here.

Today my cruise-control-cancel switch died. I use it a lot since I have the Costal Tech EV switch, and today it stopped working. In retrospect I should have seen (or rather heard) it coming, because just in the last month or so it has started to make a click when I activate the switch: it's the stalk contacting the hub of the steering wheel. It never used to do that. So apparently something's been coming loose, first allowing the stalk to move far enough to contact the wheel, and finally coming loose enough that the switch does not make contact.

My first thought was to wonder if maybe I've been using it too much, because of the EV switch, but then I thought, nah, the switch should be good for millions of contacts.

I have an appointment to have it fixed. But now I'm wondering if I should change to a different style of EV switch. But I don't want to take the entire dashboard out to go to the dedicated switch, and I don't want the side-effects of the headlight-dimmer version.

Just pondering at this point.

 

Nope. The Costal EV switch connects at the wiring harness behind the glove compartment. Somehow it taps into the cc cancel switch, but it is entirely behind the glove box. That's the beauty of it: you don't have to run wires over to the driver's side.

You can put a switch over there, using Evan's instructions in the knowledge base, but it means taking the entire dashboard apart to run the wires, and then installing an actual button. That, of course, is an option, but beyond my DIY level.

 

Thanks both of you for the input. I am not concerned at all about warranty issues. A lot of people have gotten all hot under the collar because of speculation that Toyota might void the warranty. But to the best of my knowledge, this has never happened. Why get angry at them for something they have never done, based solely on the speculation that they might? A bigger issue for me is that the Costal Tech mod was so easy to install. And I think that was their goal. Not a hidden mod, but an easy one. No drilling. No wires to string. And the cc stalk is right there at your fingertips (except while turning).

DanMan: Thanks for that. That was my biggest worry, that I was overusing it, but your report has put me at ease about that. And, yes, I am confident that it's the cc switch, not the EV mod, that is broken, based on the fact that it never used to move far enough to touch the hub of the steering wheel. When I started hearing the click I wondered about it, but thought I must have just not remembered that it did it before. But when it stopped working, I realized that the click was the first sign.

Unfortunately, I have to wait a week to get it fixed. That was the first opening they had.

 

I read the warranty wording as you do. Wayne Brown would have a really hard time getting warranty work done. Ha, ha. I forget the wording, but there was an "and" or something in there, I don't remember exactly, but something subtle yet clear.

I seem to remember some speculation that the reason the EV button was left off of the North American models was that it would confuse the EPA mileage tests. Considering how imprecise those teasts are, it's sad that such a consideration should have deprived us of a factory-installed button.

Anyway, today I confirmed that all the cc switches on the stalk work fine, except the cancel switch, which will neither cancel the cc nor trigger the EV. Also that turning cc on or off via the little button on the end causes the stalk to wobble as it never did before.

I suspect the real problem is that the stalk itself is merely loose, so that pulling on it does not operate the switch. But it's only loose front-to-back, not up-down, so that the increment and decrement switches work. It will probably be a very simple repair, once they remove enough stuff to get at it.