New guy, big problem. Led headlights were swapped!

Seek legal help. The "small side dealer" is responsible and should be held legally liable to fix it correctly.

 

It stays lit just like it is supposed to. Defeating that destroys the very purpose it was designed for. The right thing was not done by you. Two wrongs don't make a right. Please follow David's advice and help make sure the responsible party thinks twice before trying to screw anyone else in the future.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Lawyer up.

 

Are the alerts audible and continuous?

I'll take a stab at an idea: When installing LED bulbs you need to add load resisters or fancy relays, so in this case maybe you need to remove something from the factory circuit to lessen the resistive load somewhat.

 

Was this accident repair performed before you bought it?

If yes, then:

The responsibility would have been only between the repair shop and the car owner at that time. If that owner accepted that substitution (e.g. was willing to take this tradeoff to reduce costs), then the repair shop's responsibility is over. Subsequent ownership changes would typically have been under 'suitable for intended purpose' or 'as is', with no recourse unless the most recent seller made actionable misrepresentations.

I don't believe that a pop-up alert renders a car unsuitable for its intended purpose, so legal action is likely to be throwing money down a rathole. So we should stick to ways the OP can get this alert turned off.

My only suggestion would be to search for a used set of LED lights from a scrapped Prius. What might these cost?

 

If there is no alarm chiming incessantly and the lights are functional, I would try to live with it until I found affordable OEM LED lights to replace those halogens.

Of course having flashing triangles and error messages up in your face would be a visual annoyance, and one can understand the need to seek a solution if it exists.. and doesn't cost 600+

 

Hi Bellman. Welcome to the forum.

Interesting perdicament you're in. I have no first hand experience with this particular issue, but here are my thoughts based on my general automotive knowledge. Regardless of the type of fixture (halogen or LED) there's going to be some sort of interface with the ECU to monitor on/off and bulb-out function. Given that these two lighting options are so wildly different in terms of power draw, I can't see how a single interface could handle both. So my guess (and it is a guess) is that it's not as simple as swapping in the LED fixture/bulb, and plugging it into the halogen connector. There's likely an additional wiring harness... perhaps even a swap of a body ECU is required.

Here's how I would approach it: Folks upgrade from halogen to LED, so if you can find someone who's documented the upgrade, you may be able to reverse-engineer your way to a solution.

I Googled "2011 Prius LED Headlights".

Among the hits was THIS thread. I just glanced through the first page, but there appears to be photos and a lengthy (5 page) discussion. Maybe you can find what you need there. If so, then that covers the "how" in this problem. That leaves the simple matter of "how much".

If I remember correctly, these LED fixtures are $750 each from Toyota (ouch!). It's no wonder the PO replaced them with halogens. If it were me, I would do one of two things:
1) Do what that member did in the link above, and piece together an LED system.
2) Consider contacting someone who's done the LED conversion -- maybe the member from that thead -- and see if you can purchase the halogen parts from his car, and do a proper halogen conversion that doesn't trip fault codes.

Good luck... and keep us posted.

 

My guess (and I stress the word guess) is that the required harness would address that.

 

As far as I know, there isn't any programming involved in swapping a Body ECU.

You can pull up the wiring diagrams at techinfo.toyota.com. They show the variations between trim/option levels as to what wires and connectors are and are not present in the harnesses. My guess would be that the Body ECU connector pinouts do not change much
(really, the ECU itself pretty much attaches to the "instrument panel junction block" and the harnesses generally attach to that). If only some headlight-leveling/moonroof-related circuits are not there and the pinouts are otherwise the same, I'd guess your chances would be pretty good. It would be an interesting experiment, at least.

-Chap