OK I owned a 07 TCH for a while, then dumped it. I may want to come back, but was wondering what if anything has changed. My b2 biggest pet peeves witht he TCH were:

- the slope of the plastic in front of the guages comes out toward you at the bottom making it a dust magnet. Cleaning it makes it easy to scratch, big pain. Many other makers slope it the other way, it reduces dust and glare!! What idiots at Toyota designed this mess?

- The Instrument backlighting has one brightness control regardless of whether headlights are on or off. At night I like them less than full brightness so they don't distract my night vision, but then during the day it is too dim and i am always adjusting the brightness. Nissan and Honda if they backlight the dash under normal conditions allow it to remmebr the setting so it basically can be adjusted independantly for headlights on or off. Another oversight by Toyota.

While these 2 things are minor they drove me nuts. Other mistake I made was not getting a loaded TCH, so add in the minor issues and I dumpted it.

 

I never had a 2007, so I can't compare.

My observations on my 2009:

As far as a dust collector, I'm not seeing it - maybe the PlasmaCluster helps with this?

As far as scratching the plastic in the gauges, I don't see this either, but I use lens cloths- the type use for cleaning glasses. If you use anything else, I would suspect scratching possible (in any car.)

As for dash illumination, I will have to investigate more. I had read about this in some posts, but I drive last and had no issues with the brightness (or lack there of). I need to tweak to see if I can replicate.

 

no difference with the 09.

I don't understand your gauge illumination issue. Wouldn't auto headlights do the trick?

The gauges don't adjust in the day time I thought. You can only adjust them when the lights are on at night (turning the lights on in the day shouldn't dim them)

 

If I adjusted the guages with the headlights on to dim them then turned the headlights off the guages stayed dimmed. Auto headlights had no effect on this. Of course I had an early 07 and it has been over a year since I got rid of it.

 

It seems there are three stages to the gauge lighting. This is how mine seems to work (I don't pay attention to it all the time so hopefully my memory servers correct):

1. Full on.
Normal daylight driving.

2. Full on (or something close) with headlights.
During dusk driving.

3. Dimmed with headlights.
Night driving.

I have to keep my dimmer adjustment all the way down to the lowest because I find the gauge lighting at night is way too bright -- well correction -- the gauges are not too bright, the **** radio is. I wish there was a separate control for the radio lighting.

I am not sure what dash part you talking about that collects dust and has glare? The clear plastic over the gauges? If so, I barely get glare on that. I do agree if you clean it you need to be careful to not scratch it. Mine has a scratch from something.

Sorry to hear the car drove you to get rid of it -- it is more important to be comfortable in what we drive. What did you switch to?

 

really?? That's definitely not right. It should go back to full daytime brightness if you turn off the headlights (day or night).

 

OK,

Relating to the three stages/illumination factors for the gauges, it looks like what most people are referring to comes from the way the luminosity rings around the gauges change.

If your ECO DRIVE LEVEL is below 25 mpg, you have no ring illumination. 26 -> 30 gives little illumination, 31 -> 35 yields bright ring illumination and > 36 mpg, maximum illumination.

Not sure if this is what everyone is referring to, but it seems, IMHO, to be a reasonable alternative/explanation of what may be happening.

 

I guess people could be super upset about that but it sounds like they were referring to the overall dash lights. If one does not like the blue ring, speed more :-P

 

I guess I need to go try an 09, I might of had a bug in mine or maybe early 07's behaved differenlty, but I was always adjusting the guage illumination. I found that with light off and I dimmed the guages if I turned lights on they stayed dimmed.

 

I agree, it is weird. My dimming **** is as low as it goes before shutting the dash lights off completely.