Hopefully this saga will be of benefit to others who may have experienced the same thing...

We've had this vehicle since September of 2006. After having gotten some new tires I took the HiHy up to the NC mountains to do a little snow skiing and playing in the snow-covered roads (12 inches predicted... we got about 4). The next day my wife took it to the local AutoBell car wash. While there they are running a special where you get the "underbody wash" for only a dollar more than the regular full service. Wife says "Sure, why not". Car comes out looking and driving normal but as she starts to drive it out she hears a "click, click, click, click, click, click.... Right away she notices that the NAVI isn't working ("system disconnected" is the message and the only thing the screen will display is the fuel economy screen). She calls me wanting to know what to do. I tell her to first go back into the car wash and let them know and then drive it to Toyota (about 2 blocks away). Of course, she doesn't want to confront the car wash guy so she just drives it to the Toyota dealership. They take about 20 minutes and say "It appears that a connector behind the dash has come dis-connected. We will need to order the part. The car is fine to drive until next week when we will have the part". In her defense she did go back to the car wash and told them about the incident so that they could write up a report.

After she gets home (2 or 3 hours later) she notices that her jacket which had been laying on the floorboard in the back seat was damp so she took a closer look and the carpet under the seat was ABSOLUTELY SOAKED. So she mentioned this to Toyota and they took a look at it the next day...

As I understand it, many Highlander's that are delivered in the South (i.e. below the Mason-Dixon line) come from Toyota with some "body plugs" in the glove compartment. This is basically a few pieces of circular plastic that many dealerships (mine included apparently) simply "toss" them aside (into a big bucket) when they are prepping the truck. Turns out these $0.05 plugs may be far more important than many dealerships realize. This time they cost them about $5K...

You see, the NAVI for these trucks is located under the drivers seat (like many are in other vehicles including my 2004 TL). One of the places where these "body Plugs" are SUPPOSE to be is in the floorboard of the truck. They weren't there on mine and ....you guessed it, when she got the underbody wash, water came right up through those holes and into the Toyota Navigation System and turned it into a crispy little device... Oops!

Needless to say the first question they asked was "Where did you buy the truck"....Unfortunately (for them), we bought if from this dealership brand new. So, in the end we got a BRAND NEW NAVI unit on Toyota. I have not yet had the chance to look at it closely but I DO know that the street we live on is on the new map so at the very least, we got a new MAP DVD in the deal. Being the optimist of the family I am also hoping that maybe we got the bluetooth interface as well? Time to go search the forum for NAVI versions to see if this was a blessing in disguise.

For those of you nearing your mileage warranty expiration.... You may wan to check to make certain your plugs are inserted in the undercarriage of your truck otherwise, it may be $5K out of your pocket if it's not in warranty.

Could some mod please correct the title to "could cost" rather than "cost cost"

 

Whoa, very interesting story. I don't know exactly how that body plug looks like or where it is in my HCH I. I'll have to make sure it's there. Thanks for the heads up and I'm glad you got your HiHy taken care of.