I’m changing my brake actuator, does anyone have the official guide?

Was it new or "new to you"?

 

Hopefully they have another new part. I would get a pump while you are at it. They go bad as well and were the only thing originally changed by Toyota when the brake booster mess started.

Be careful of used units! Most have the wrong firmware. Even 15”-17” tires are different part numbers in the same year.

Used sellers don’t know this. Best used part would have a verifiable vin which is then used to verify part number with Toyota against your vin. I would look at LKQ (lkqonline.com) locally if a new part is not available.

 

Who is telling you the master cylinder is defective? The independent mechanic? Toyota technician? I thought the same thing about mine when I couldn’t bleed it Properly. The independent mechanics I know couldn’t bleed the system with their scan tool either. This is a very specific procedure. Toyota is going to blame the technician who did the installation and not agree it’s a faulty part.

 

You or they need Techstream, the windows based Toyota scanner. Its more than bleeding, there are calibrations as well.

One or two have reported success with the $500 XTool D8 scanner.

 

If you have a scan tool that's able to go through the bleeding sequence, you're in pretty good shape.

There are some calibrations that might need done, but they generally have jumper-the-pins dances you can fall back on if your scan tool doesn't know about them.

The linear solenoid offset learning is automatically included at the end of the long-form brake bleed sequence, so the only times you might need to do that step manually are when for some reason it didn't go perfectly at the end of the bleed process. There's a jumper-the-pins dance if you need to do it.

 

Thinkdiag is like 100 dollars. You can do it with that scan tool if you have a Samsung. Two dealers wouldn’t touch the car. If they don’t start the repair from the beginning they don’t want to take responsibility by continuing it after someone else.

I used my thinkcar thinkdiag dongle scan tool with my Samsung A42. It bleed it right away and did the solenoid relearning. It tells you what to do step by step. If your mechanic has that in his scan tool then he can bleed Properly. It’ll get to a point when you bleed the master cylinder itself and hear darth Vaders breathe come out.

I don’t know which other inexpensive scan tools can do it.

Which codes are you getting? The evil code that locks the master cylinder? The warning lights stay on until you get rid of the evil code. Check @ChapmanF s thread about that. I don’t remember the code number. The only way to get rid of it is to do the bleeding with a capable scan tool or tech stream. I found I could brake normally but I only truly finished with no warning lights when I bled the system.

 

C1451. Once you've been through it it's hard to forget.

 

That’s the evil code you can’t get rid of even if you clear all your fault codes. That won’t clear until you do the bleeding and relearning. You’re almost at the end but that code won’t let you go further. Is your car braking now? Are you able to drive it? Can you buy another scan tool? Rent one? Can you get the tech stream subscription with the cable and laptop?


You’ll need more brake fluid because the brake master cylinder actuator will take up a lot of fluid itself when the right scan tool is used.

 

The good news is the computers in the car are in fact computers, and the trouble codes they give do in fact mean what they mean. The C1451 code means "I'm going to keep showing you this code until you complete the bleed sequence" and once you do that, the code does go away.

I don't think you need to complete the linear solenoid offset learning for the C1451 to go away. Just the bleed sequence (though that normally gets you the offset learning for free). But if you end up still with the separate C1345 code about the offset learning, then you do need to do that as well—only after making the C1451 go away, as you can't do it before,

 

I did not try to return the old one. If that’s an option I’d love to know who would take it as I have it in storage.

 

They don’t rebuild brake boosters. It would nice if they did but the different firmware and hydraulic complexity is a problem.

 

I thought Hybrid Pit Stop had recently announced maybe offering rebuilts.

Not very forthcoming yet about what they do, or how, or what they mean by "finally hacked the code". Caveat emptor.