More cosmetic stuff...

Post a photo?

Bob Wilson

 

In case you haven't already realized this: if your wife is not happy, you will not be happy. This is a fact of life.

However, your wife will hopefully come to learn that there is a concept of "diminishing returns", where the cost to correct a minor issue may exceed the benefit of that correction. Assuming that you have limited economic resources available to your household, this concept needs to be considered.

The cost to make an 8-year old car "perfect" will likely exceed its market value. When the time comes to sell you'll recognize a big financial loss. (I learned this lesson very painfully with a 1985 Jaguar XJ6 Vandenplas that I restored to car show condition in the 90s.)

Good luck with your domestic discussions, I would not want to be part of that dialogue.

 

Looks pretty minor to me. What potentially might be very irritating is if you broke a plastic trim panel while trying to access that switch. I'd leave it alone, but then I'm not the one married to your wife.

 

Gold leaf. Clean the surface and buff with a Dremil buffer tool (make sure to mask off the plastic.) Then apply layers of gold leaf until it glows. Then tell the wife 'well there goes the vacation budget.' <grins> (No, don't tell the wife that!)

Bob Wilson

 

On partswebsite.com, it looks as if the various buttons on the panel are grouped into four sets, with the cheapest set about $10 and the costliest $24, dealer price before discount. (They're under Instrument Panel / Cluster and Switches.) What I can't quite tell from the illustration is which set contains the button you want, so maybe a chat with your local dealer would work out better than trying to guess and order online. With the prices that reasonable, the effort of pulling used ones off a salvage Prius doesn't look very attractive, because it's pretty tedious work.

It pretty much boils down to taking out your center instrument panel (comes out with the MFD, radio, and all controls attached, you just disconnect about a dozen wiring connectors), laying it on a tidy workbench and disassembling it down to the buttons, which are about the last thing left after you've stripped everything else, swapping out the worn-down buttons, then putting everything back where it came from. If you're confident doing that kind of thing it's not hard, but there are a lot of small pieces.

To avoid cracking the finish panel, you might want to pick a time when it is warm (has been in the sun, or a nice toasty garage) and be sure not to miss any of the bolts/nuts, not even the ones behind the hazard switch.

Of course, when she sees you scattering cluster pieces all over the workbench, she has to believe they'll all go back together, or she won't be happier than she is now....

-Chap

 

Please take photos and share with the group.

Bob Wilson

 

I'm more interested in photos of your dash disassembly and reassembly. We have lots of photos of painted sheet metal but not so many of the stuff inside.

Bob Wilson

 

That sounds like you're looking at an assembly.

Try expanding Instrument Panel, then Cluster and Switches, then click pretty much any of the items under that heading (Finish Panel, say). Doesn't really matter which item you click, but once you are looking at the details for that item, there will be a button to the right for View Illustrations. Click that, and you should see an illustration with numbered callouts, and four of those are just sets of the plastic buttons. Those four sets (cleverly named Set #1, #2, #3, and #4) came up for me with prices between $10 and $24, and discounted prices less than that.

It does sometimes turn out that a part shown in the catalog isn't actually orderable; I don't think you can find out until you try to order it.

hope this helps,
-Chap

... if you really decide you want to do the teardown, some of the highlights I remember after getting the console out, and removing the radio and MFD (straightforward) are taking out the climate control circuit board (requires undoing the nuts on the 3 rotary controls, and separating a flat cable from one of those on-PC-board clamp connectors, and clipping one nylon wire tie), and taking out a bunch of clear plastic light guides that distribute light from a few illumination bulbs to all of the buttons and legends). The buttons themselves are what's left after that. Then drop the light guides back into their places and put everything else back where it went.