I just did this today, too. I used some wire I had(did all three) instea of re-using the ribbon. So, six solder joints re-done later and I put it in. It worked. What a miracle. Thanks, for posting this. It gave me the knowledge and courage to try it. Also, the high replacement cost of the whole unit gave me I-have-nothing-to-lose courage.
Thank you for doing this video, it was very helpful. I was able to do a 2006 by just removing the center knob and leaving everything in place. Used a long fine tip soldering pencil, fine electronic solder, wearing a headlamp on my forehead and reading glasses. Worked through the small curved opening above the wires. Used a very small screw driver to carefully position the broken end of wire over the solder pad on the board and then quickly applied a small ball of solder to the pad and wire, was able to get each of the 3 wires first try. The center wire was still connected but re-soldered it anyway. You do need a steady hand and the right iron and solder. May not be the best method for everyone but it can be done and only takes a few minutes.
just fixed the same problem on my 01 highlander. Removing and installing is a job anyone can do, but had my brother in law do the soldering as he has experience in that area . the cost of a new unit from my local dealer is $1400, so well worth doing it yourself.
My Aunt wants me to thank you for posting this . she was told the repair would be $450.00 i told her i would look into it for her as i am the family's go to repair person . this was the first video i came upon and you were right on !! All 3 wires were broken . after taking some time i was able to fix it . biggest issue was clearing the holes so the wire would go back thru. From both of us thanks for the Info/Video !!
I just completed this repair just as you describe! It was easy except for stripping and re-soldering the short gray ribbon cable. That was difficult at my age! Thank you so much for your very helpful video, sir!!
My Toyota dealer wanted $1500 to fix my intermittent climate control on my 2006 Highlander. I followed the instructions on this video (my ribbon cable was broken in two places, just like in the video) and in less than two hours I fixed the problem. Thank you DIY BRI!!
Brian you have saved people so much money with this video. Thank you. First time doing precision soldering, this took my quite a while to get it right with how fragile the wires were in my veichle . But eventually got it fixed. Cost me about $50 for soldering iron, multi meter, and refrigerant.
Thank you Brian. I tried to solder 1st time in my life and it worked. I mess up with wire lock clip while pulling up and break it (might be very old). I use hot glue to hold wire in the clip board and it work well. Best way is open the clear plastic at the back and release wire at the top side. Now both heat and AC are working perfectly.
First, thanks! Your diagnosis was spot on. Kept turning from hot to cold arbitrarily. Took 30 min to take apart as your steps were exactly right. The ribbon was broken just as suspected. Since I don’t have the tool to remove the solder easily I just stripped the wires and soldered them to the stubs on top. Worked perfect. This saved major expense. Even refurbished controls are not cheap and the new control unit is like $1200. You wouldn’t realize it’s something this simple if you had not posted this video. Thanks
This is the best video I've seen to address this issue. I've found as a temporary measure, you can sometimes move the control all the way to hot/cold a few times and it will then work where you set it. If you're like me and feel confident in your ability to remove the unit from the car, but don't think you could pull off the soldering, there are online businesses that will repair the unit and ship it back to you for under $100. Be warned that some of them say they won't work on yours if you've already attempted the repair yourself.
I have the same problem with my 2004 Highlander and have been putting off having it fixed because the dealer wanted almost $1000K to fix it (most of it was for the aftermarket part.) My Highlander has 340,000 miles on it (yes, that's right, and still runs perfectly.) But I clearly don't want to put a grand into it for this. But it is getting colder and with this video I am confident I can do this myself. This was very instructive and I'll let you know how it turns out! Thank you.
Perfect video, this was exactly our issue. We didn’t have any extra wire or a desoldering tool and the soldering iron was not great but we got it back together at $0.
I had the EXACT same problem with our '02 Highlander. You perfectly diagnosed and showed me how to fix it. The hardest part was getting the solder out of the circuit board holes- I heated up a heavy-duty sewing needle and it worked like a charm. THANKS for helping people to fix instead of waste!!!
Hi thanks for your guidance. Fixed it as instructed and it worked. Only thing I couldn't do is the soldering. So I google electronic repair shops. Had to pay 40.00 to have them fix it.......again thanks and as easy as you showed. Took them just a few minutes to repair.
I was fiddling with the knob for months, until it got too hot outside. I watched your video, took mine apart and re-solder the 3 wires. At my age, I had to use my phone's camera zoom to inspect the welds. Then I tested continuity before slapping together. Your video improved the quality of my 40 min commute- used to freeze my butt off in the winter and sweat like crazy in summer. Not anymore, thanks to your well explained video.
This is the perfect video, and it made this fix a breeze. I cheated by taking a shortcut - soldering wires on the reverse side of the boards with the mini pot board still with knob attached (I didn't even touch the ribbon after verifying it was severed on two lines). Thanks for the detail, I also upgraded the stereo whilst I had it apart. So good having a big audio upgrade and temp control back!
@@chiefinspector7280 yep it will likely be the same issue. Soldering the reverse sides of both the PCBs (main board and small dial board) is a little tricky, but easier than replacing the wire or even patching it back together by taking it fully apart. If you have soldering experience it is about a 2/10 difficulty, relatively quick and easy. You just have to be careful not to bridge the connections. I used fairly fat solder and in haste managed to do just that, which didn't cause any issue when powered on so I think there is little risk with the job. I have a photo of my fix here: i.ibb.co/wWCgK1J/i-Markup-20220402-045859.png
I had the same problem on my 2006 Highlander Hybrid and fixed it after watching this video. Thanks so much for posting this video. It saved me a lot of time fooling around trying to find out what is the cause of the problem ( hot-cold, hot-cold) . The only difficulty was trying to get those three wires back into the circuit board of the temperature switch which was a little tricky because you have to get the three wires aligned at the same time so they can be introduced into their respective holes. Other than that it's not difficult. So thanks again for a great useful video !!!
This fixed my issue. Took the assembly to UBreakiFix and they did the soldering for me! So excited to have control of my temperature in my car again!!!! Thank you DIY Bri!
Thank you so much for this video! Like most that have commented, I had a friend help me with the soldering. But everything else was very easy to do. I saved $1200 because of this video!
Thank you for the video , I just fixed my Highlander ..now ac finally works. Only took me an hour start to finish...I put 3 new wires in it instead of dealing with that short gray stock wire.
Followed your instructions to the T. I tried to do the soldering and got one of them working, that was not going to work. I took it to a tv repair guy charged me a couple of dollars and walllllllaaaaa! Thank you for helping contribute to my retirement.
What a great video! Both knobs on my 2005 Highlander are malfunctioning. Dealer wants way too much to fix, so happy I found your video!! You give great and clear instructions and make it look as if anyone, regardless of experience can do this! Will post again once I fix mine. Thanks again!!
Excellent video. After seeing a few of these videos I would suggest soldering 3 bypass wires directly on the two boards (6 solder points) without even removing the small potentiometer board. An easy solder job and just allows you to abandon the crappy ribbon altogether. Your video was awesome. Very thorough and clear! My 04 Highlander has not done this yet but I am guessing it will any day. Thanks for the great video!
Yea, that's what I did. I just soldered 3 jumpers, didn't even remove the existing ribbon (which had 1 broken wire). I used some 30AWG jumper wire. These knobs don't carry any current, so use anything that you have.
You can use 16 or 18 gauge wire. Just remove the ribbon cable and trash it. Solder in three wires cut to length and it will be good to go. The older models have the same problem only the cable is only about a centimeter long. This ribbon cable is an attempt to solve that issue but still fails.
This video is great! Went to harbor freight got a soldering iron and solder for $10. Had everything back together and running normally in a hour. Thank you!
I would of added some hot glue on the ribbon to strengthen it after soldering it. To me it's apparent that during normal use, these connectors rock ever so slightly back & forth over time. Thus causing the wires to become severed after so many cycles of back and forth action. Strongly recommend to glue that ribbon after this repair & also the one next to it that controls the vent settings. Cheers!
You are the MAN 👍. Did everything on this video of yours and it was a awesome fix🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟. My mom was happy with what her son did 😉👍. Thanks for the awesome job video.
Thanks ,I repaired mine last night about midnight and I just wanted to drive my car. I have been suffering intermittently. There is another guy that shows the same repair so I watched him also. But in reading the comments someone suggested to remove the plastic window, because it makes it easy to remove the ribbon. But I also found that the ribbon can be removed from the top white lever as well and it makes it easy.
To: DIY Bri, You were 'bang on' in diagnosing my heat/cool problem. Your video was really well done and made the disassembly easy. The trickiest part was cleaning the old solder out or the holes as I didn't have a solder vacuum. I'll be looking for your videos for future repairs. Thank you ! ! !
I can name a list of issues you may encounter when owning a 03 Highlander. 1.climate goes out ( as shown in this video) 2. Power steering line behind pass. Front tire rusts out. 3. Both flex pipe and mid exhaust after cat rusts out. 4. Both Pass. Window motors will loose power randomly. 5. Transfer seal goes bad. 6. Rusty back plates ( plate behind rotors) That's every issue I've had so far.
I had to drill out the holes to get the old solder out. Was kind of worried about that doing damage but it's all done working great, so far. Happy and warm now!
Excellent! Thanks! The Toyota engineer who designed that ribbon connection to the moving knob should be forced to watch this video over and over ... and over.
I have similar with my 04 highlander. I really appreciate the input. Mine is doing even more flaky things so I actually got a refurbished control head. I was going to pay to have someone do the work, but dang it looks easy when I don't have to actually open up and solder. Your stepping through the removal, the connectors, and re-assembly sound priceless. I am kinda sorta OK mechanically usually enough to get myself in trouble. Hope I don't break the face plate taking it off. Seems like about the only thing I could screw up. I'll report back.
Dude thank you SO MUCH. Just got a used 05 highlander and was able to fix my AC by fixing this ribbon disconnect. Not only that but I find out the radio was disconnected from the antenna so I fixed that too. :D
Thank you so much I have got a 2002 Toyota Highlander by watching this review now I can fix my my control to cut it cold and hot thank you so much and give a thumbs up to you
Thanks bud ive had this problem for a year and Toyota wanted 1300 to fix so i left it alone but saw this video and pulled it out and bingo that was the problem
Thanks so much for this! It is clearly the problem with mine too! I think the tape wire holds too rigid, so I am going to cut 2 slits to allow more movement!
We repaired as described EXCEPT we replaced the 1 short, stiff 3-wire ribbon with 3 longer, flexible, individual wires of the same guage. Much easier to solder, time will tell if it is more durable.
Good and thorough video. I have a limited edition with the auto control. the fan control went out but the temperature knob still works, but now it is starting to go out also. I'm guessing that it is probably the same knob issue that you addressed in this video??? I think i'm going to attempt this repair. Thanks!!!
Nope, auto is exactly the same. Just fixed my ribbon today on 2007 Highlander with the upgraded AC. The nut that holds the temperature control knob came loose, and consequently the ribbon broke. Literally took my 30 minutes to remove, solder, replace and test. I solder at home all the time (I do electrical tech), so that part was simple for me, but might be daunting for others without the right stuff. Thanks to Do It Yourself Bri for the video, pointed me right to the problem before I got started!
At one point I had that same model Highlander with the exact same issue. The dealer fixed it for free. Might be one of those recalls they don't talk about.
We repaired as described EXCEPT we replaced the 1 short, stiff 3-wire ribbon with 3 longer, flexible, individual wires of the same guage. Much easier to solder, time will tell if it is more durable.
Thanks so much!!! Saved me a couple hundred $$$ if I had sent in my panel for repair, or $1200 for a new one. A few tips: Get a good fine-point soldering iron (
My highlander hybrid was broken into and the radio was stolen. They ripped out the climate controls with it but lucky no wiring was damaged. I found the complete control unit that should work for my hybrid but the dashboard display for outside temp reads "e" and the ac doesnt blow cold air. Could this mean i have the wrong part or do i have to reset something?
Thank You ...you saved us $1200 too. The cause is the nut behind the knob coming loose; the encoders moves around and the ribbon cable can't handle that kind of back and forth motion. I replaced the ribbon with individual wires and put a lock nut on the encoder.
I like the idea of the lock nut on the knob as I did find mine loose and I'm sure the vibration caused the fine, fragile wires to break. Thanks for the tip!
Thank you very much for posting this. Very good explanation of the process and the fix. I used your video to guide me step by step. You saved me a bunch of money. Thank you very much!
I am so grateful for this video. I will be trying this once my solder tool gets here. Although, i do have a question before I attempt this. My heat temperate knob is loose compared to other knobs on the panel. Is this something that could be controling the blend door and it not be the need to solder? Thanks!
Just subscribed, I have a friend whose highlanders heater is having issues. It blows heat on the drivers side, but the passenger side is cold air, and it's winter time. I sent him this video, hopefully it is a soldering issue. I'll let you know if he fixes it. Good video!
I have a 2004 Highlander (basic). I followed your repair advice and it worked perfectly. Thanks. Now, however, I have another issue which you may be able to provide some insight. The other day, out of the blue, the digital clock light stopped illuminating and the light on the AC button was not on, even though AC was cooling my car. I also noticed that the Hazard button would not come on, even though it too was functional. I check the interior and engine fuse boxes (specifically the heater fuse 15A, Radio No.2 fuse (7.5A), and the ECU-B fuse 7.5A in the Engine Junction Block) - all of the fuses were not blown. Not sure what else to check. Any ideas? Thanks! WR
Worth putting a paper towel, plastic bag, or a rag next to the climate/stereo unity when removing bolts -- saves losing them under the dash if one falls. Also, the nut clips on the top left and right corners behind the dash can fall out, be sure they are centered before trying to reinstall unit into dash.
Had the exact same problem on my 1987 Celica. Toyota sucks for using those circuit boards from the same cheapo company over 20 years. When our 2004 Highlander heater went out, I knew exactly how to fix it. Amazes me how they were too cheap to spring for a more solid component considering how much work it is to fix it. Thank God Toyota doesn't build airliners!
Hi Brian. Great vid. Very helpful. I tried and failed at the re-solder of the three wire harness. I want to order a refurbish unit and the seller has one but says I must take the power amplifier off of the old unit and screw it with the 8 screws back onto the component with the broken three wire harness. Is the power amplifier what you set aside in the video but didn't identify?
Thanks great video. Very clear and concise step by step process. Watch out Toyota dealerships will be looking for your knee caps. Mine just lost $600 dollars because of you.
My Highlander has the digital LCD screen which no longer works. As far as I know, that part is not repairable. Are the wiring harness hookups the same between the digital and manual climate control units? I was thinking of switching over to a manual unit.
This was a great video, found the ribbon cable was broken on both ends. Unfortunately in the process of desoldering/resoldering i melted out the small eyelet for one of the connections on the switch itself. I was able to get a makeshift connection between the thin strip on the board itself, but it will need to be replaced Does anyone know where you can purchase just the heat switch? It is functioning properly but i would like to replace the switch and get a more solid connection in place.
