Used Prado 2016 (New to me! :-)

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

Hello everyone,

I just purchased a 2016 Prado and while I'm loving it so far I notice a few things that I thought I would ask about. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(1) My Prado has a 3rd row of seats, but the smaller of the two backseats refuses to go down. I think the seat release lever near the headrest is broken or unhooked. Anyone have any suggestions on how I can address this? I can bring the seat down and forward (for someone to get into/out of the third row of seats), but I cannot put it down flat like the larger seat and center armrest. I do not think tumbling is possible at all (could be my prado model.) I have indicated what I think is not working properly with a red arrow.

(2) There is a little circular thing that when I pry off I notice it has a harness plugged into it. Is this simply a powered blank/unused accessory slot, or is this little thing doing something?

(3) Lastly, I would like to enable locking when I move the automatic shifter out of park, but it seems that some vehicles cannot do this because when I follow the manual's procedure I do not get any results -- could it be my vehicle does not allow for it?

I apologize if this all looks disorientating, my steering wheel is on the left hand side not the right as I'm sure you are used to seeing!

Thanks,
PradoFanLHD

[GeeWhizz Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close GeeWhizz]

(1) My suggestion is to try and look at the workings of the seat mechanism that does work and try to determine what is broken or missing in the faulty seat.
(2) My 2016 GX (Base model in Australia) does not have that round sensor or even a blanking plug in that location of either side of the vehicle. Does your vehicle have dual zone air conditioning? It may be a temperature or humidity sensor for the rear air conditioning.
(3) There may be an option to set the doors to lock that can only to selected via Toyota Techstream access to the appropriate ECU. The option may also be related to a combination of vehicle speed and the gear selector not being in "Park". My analysis of data from the engine/gearbox ECU shows that a flag is set whenever the vehicle goes over 18 km/h (but I don't know exactly what this is used for).

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

Thanks, mate. I must admit I'd not have thought a fellow Lurker would be the one to shed so much light on my confusions. I'm humbled -- may I some day be the Lurker you are. :-)

(1) Great advice, hopefully will see something before having to remove any upholstery which I'd probably have to outsource.

(2) Mine's a TXL so either base or midway between the TX and VXL, I'm not sure. I do have separate AC controls for the driver, front passenger and then another for the rear, so it may well be a sensor for the AC system. That makes a lot of sense. I think my Prado and the Lexus GX460 use the same parts in many cases.

(3) I only have a regular OBD II scanner and also a FOXPRO scanner. The FOXPRO scanner does not work with the PRADO but works fine with my RAV4 (and while it can do stuff like add tire pressure sensors, I dont think it can do techstream programming.) I'm guessing a techstream device is costly - do you recommend any? My manual gives instructions on how to set it though it does say "if equipped". My Prado is automatic and the manual transmission ones are quite rare (or perhaps totally unavailable) in my region. That signal for 18 km/h probably controls not only the auto lock in some cases (like my 4runner used to do), but also the seatbelt alarm.

Again, I really appreciate the quick response. I am glad to see enthusiasts willing to help me and I hope to be able to help some people also though at this point I will probably be posting mostly questions. I'm not a mechanic but I do dabble and I do my own accessory installations e.g. stereo, auto-dimming mirrors, usb-chargers that fit in accessory slots, etc. so I am not totally clueless.

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

For anyone who was interested, (1) was solved by a cable sheath not being properly anchored. I'm attaching before/after photos.

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

So it was not a big deal, but important for me.

I had to move the other seat + armrest out of the way to reveal a screw fastening the inside seat moulding to the reclining adjuster.

Removed the screw & the moulding from the upholstery (held via a rectangular hook on the inside of the moulding that fits into a square hole in the cloth) and from the two-piece cover for the adjuster (held via plastic clips.)

The space was tight so I used curved tip locking hemostats as precision pliers to do this, but there may be an easier way.

Lastly, I merely fit the groove of the ferrule (?) at the end of the cable sheath into the notch of its bracket. Then everything worked fine.

[GeeWhizz Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close GeeWhizz]

Thanks, mate. I must admit I'd not have thought a fellow Lurker would be the one to shed so much light on my confusions. I'm humbled -- may I some day be the Lurker you are. :-)

Well done on getting to the bottom of the seat latch problem. A simple fix was all that was required!

I've been a long-time lurker (without a Pradopoint login). My "Lurker" status is the result of getting a PP login only recently. As I understand it, the "Lurker" status gets upgraded when your post count reaches a predetermined threshold. Don't let member's status put you off: there are many very knowledgeable members of this forum, with a wealth of experience.

I'm a semi-retired electronic engineer who gets right into the detail of the Prado's electrical wiring diagram and am not afraid to remove trim panels etc. to run cables or find connectors. The current project for my Prado is designing/building a custom CAN bus interface that connects to my house via a wireless link to report the vehicle's door and lock status. While we have off street parking, my carport is open to the street and, on rare occasions, we have left our vehicles unlocked overnight .

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

Thanks. No idea how that cable became unfastened to begin with.

And now I get it -- the Lurker status is not always as it seems.

Interestingly, I'm a computer engineer myself by qualification. But while from time to time I do some projects with microcontrollers, I have not done electronics professionally so I do not have too much recent practical experience. Sounds like a fun and complex project you're working on!

I am thinking to use a relay/opto-coupler device to generate a signal that detects my reverse light and locks my doors if my Prado doesn't allow for it, and to me that is already complicated. What type of wireless link are you considering?

[GeeWhizz Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close GeeWhizz]

I am thinking to use a relay/opto-coupler device to generate a signal that detects my reverse light and locks my doors if my Prado doesn't allow for it, and to me that is already complicated. What type of wireless link are you considering?

The wireless link has been working for 2 1/2 years. I originally made the interface for our previous car, a Toyota Kluger (called a Highlander in other parts of the world) after our GPS was pilfered overnight and on another occasion a toolbox was nicked. On a couple of other times, we found the car unlocked in the morning, untouched. Our fault - we need to be more vigilant! Anyway, now we have the wireless link and just have to look at the status lights or hear the beeps. The door and lock switching and CAN bus signals in the 2016/17 Prado are identical to the 2013 Kluger, so transitioning it over was quite straight forward.

The CAN bus interface is a SparkFun OBD-II UART interfaced to an HC-12 wireless transceiver module (range up to about 50m) using a PIC microcontroller. The current project is to use the CAN interface to report other Prado-centric information like DPF data.

The Prado's CAN networks are pretty secure when it comes to locking and unlocking the doors. It's not something I've looked into and I won't say interfacing to operate the locks is impossible but it might be. The Prado has a separate security bus to its normal CAN bus.

[PradoFanLHD Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close PradoFanLHD]

Sorry to hear about your GPS. That sounds like a fun and sophisticated solution. I once started a project where the plan was to make a general power supply for vehicle devices. The idea was for a stepdown transformer to charge a LiPoly battery while the vehicle was running so that once the vehicle was shut off the device would run off its battery rather than the car battery. It made use of https://www.adafruit.com/product/1385 and https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-...ost-1000-basic but ultimately I never got past the prototyping phase.

When I mentioned placing a lock switch, I was thinking to simply mimick the press of the switch on the driver's side door rather than actually doing digital communication via the CAN bus interface. Though I suspect -- and perhaps you are the perfect one to confirm -- that it may result in some wayward electrons either flowing where they shouldn't be or not not flowing where they should. This could probably be addressed through additional circuitry too.