316: Wrong Part, Wrong Keys

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Hey, what's going on, Automotive World?

Welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

My name is Sean Tipping.

I'll be your host once again for this week's episode.

Thank you so much for joining me.

With me on the show this week, I'm going to talk about wrong parts a little bit.

I have mentioned this on the show before.

These previous episodes, of course, it's an ongoing battle that we face in the automotive

repair world, and if you're doing programming and keys, obviously it's going to affect

you there too, but I'll give you some of my current thoughts on it, some recent

things we've been battling with, and a couple case studies that I thought were

pretty interesting that who knows, maybe it'll run into something similar.

But like I mentioned, I've talked about wrong parts before, and you know, it's one thing

if you are in a repair shop and you are the one ordering the parts, you have a little

bit more control over what you're getting in the vehicle, but even then you may run

into a situation where your supplier is still getting you the incorrect parts, something

was labeled incorrectly, something was remanufactured incorrectly, or it's just

difficult to figure out what the correct component is, right?

We face a lot of challenges, but with the mobile side of things, we often run into

this because outside of keys and specific module situations, we're not really in

control of what part the shop got for said vehicle.

Now, we've somewhat trained some of our shops to at least check in with us to

say, hey, is this part going to work in this application, specifically with a

control module?

And of course, that in itself is challenging because really the best thing

that we can offer a lot of the time, especially when it's a used control

module, right?

They're replacing the PCM or body control module out of something as we'll

tell them, hey, you got to match the part number.

And that's really the only way that we can guarantee that this is going to

work because there's not a database out there for a vehicle to say,

this is the list of wrong part numbers that will work in this application,

right?

If you get something, the part number doesn't match on, let's just say a body

control module on something, it might work, right?

I've programmed plenty of modules that had different part numbers than the

original and I'm not talking just, you know, the last two letters are,

you know, a superseded number.

This is like a different part number, but it's actually worked in the

application, but that's a roll of the dice.

We have no idea whether that's going to work or not.

And again, there's not necessarily a database out there that's going to

tell you what is going to work in the wrong application.

So, and we tell shops in that situation too, like, Hey, if you get

the right part number and it's a quality module, we can make it work in X

situation.

If we can do a used module in that situation, of course, that's another

layer of complexity is even if you get the right one, can you make a

used module work in that particular application or not?

But if you get the wrong one, like, and that's the way you want to go, or

maybe that's the only thing you can find, that's a possibility too.

That's the closest one that you can get for this application.

We'll try it, but you're going to be paying us either way, because

we're not promising you that this is going to work.

And we will do the best on our end to make sure that our part

of it is done correctly.

But there's limitations there.

And we try to let the shops know that beforehand.

So they know what they're getting into.

But we run into it all the time, right?

And a lot of where this comes from is shops, you know, buying

parts from salvage yards, junk yards, eBay, you know, other

sources online, where there's some compatibility issues where

they'll list, Hey, this works for this application.

But in some cases, it's just, it's the same physical module,

meaning it's, it will plug in to said connectors on said car, but

it doesn't necessarily mean that it's right.

It might be, but it might not be.

Um, and some of these databases or references that you can use

online aren't terrible.

I mean, you can definitely use something like car dash parts.com.

And that's actually a pretty helpful resource to help you

figure out what module might belong in what application.

Now it's not 100%, right?

There's still going to be a margin of error there, but you

can use it and you can figure it out.

But where we see a big issue is, um, shops buying parts from

local salvage yards, and they're just like, yep, this

works in this application, when maybe it doesn't

necessarily, or it's real close, but there's certain

features that don't work in that body control module the

way that they're supposed to, or it just won't complete

programming because the Ford software doesn't like the part

number or the GM TLC doesn't like the part number of this

radio, the hardware numbers wrong.

So it's just going to kick it back.

And of course, okay, there are alternative methods to

get some things to work.

Yeah, but you're really getting into the weeds there.

So we run up against this a lot in module programming.

Now you can also use things like repair link shop.

And that's one of our biggest resources when we are trying

to determine, Hey, what is the correct part number for

this application?

Because sometimes you're thrust into a situation, maybe

vehicles come from another repair facility, maybe the

customer did some work, maybe it came from the auction

and you don't have the original module, right?

Of course, the easiest way is just to compare the

number on the module and get that same one.

But if you don't have the original, it's already been

replaced and you're either confident the one that's in

there is wrong, or you're wondering if the module or

part that is installed is incorrect.

You can use repair link shop.

And this is true for more than just control modules.

You can use it for all kinds of different parts.

And it's based off of the Vin and it's pretty

accurate as far as I found.

Now I was recently teaching a webinar for some folks in

Australia and unfortunately, if you're outside of the

US, it sounds like you can't use repair link shop.com.

So I apologize if that's you.

It is a nice resource to have if it's available.

But anyways, what it does is it links dealerships

basically to you and you can look up parts based

off of the Vin.

You get that factory part number for not only

control module, but you can even do it for keys

as well, which I found very helpful to try to

get the correct key, which we'll talk about a

little bit more here.

But when you have the current factory part number,

that's real helpful because then you can take that

number, obviously compared to what you have, but

you can do some searching online with that.

Now, a lot of times these numbers are the

newest version.

They've superseded others and that's a common

thing where you see a module.

It's got an older part number, but it's still

compatible with the one that you're working on.

And sometimes we'll use other websites that

sell factory parts like they'll be like a GM

online parts ordering.

And if you look up the control module you're

after, it'll have a list of superseded numbers

that fall under this new number.

And that might be a way to that, especially if

you're doing a used control module, you could

say, OK, well, at least this one's in the

list of superseded parts.

If you're working on Chrysler vehicles and

you're doing control modules, especially this

would apply to mainly engine control,

transmission control.

You can use their Fed World report that they

update frequently.

It's available free.

If you just Google that, you'll find it.

And that's been really helpful to determine

whether the correct hardware application is in

the vehicle we're working on, or if they're

doing a used control module that's out of

something else, is this hardware compatible

with the vehicle that it's being installed in?

Can I put the software that I need to into this

module and have it work in this application?

Right?

Because we run into that just a ton.

It definitely seems to be one of the more

common ones where there are so many different

hardware options for a Chrysler ECM that

physically will plug into the same car.

Right.

If you think about the GPEC two controllers,

the style of connector worked on a ton of

different applications, but that doesn't mean

that the hardware is the same across the board.

There are definitely situations where that's not

true, but that Fed World report will help

you dial in.

You can use some control F action and figure

out pretty quickly if what you're dealing

with will work in your application for GM

control modules.

If you look at the service number, because

there's there's going to be a hardware part

number, and then there's going to be a service

number that service number is the one that you

want to match.

And again, you can have the physical

hardware that plugs into the same module, but

you can have one out of a four cylinder, one

out of a six cylinder, and there's missing

drivers in that four cylinder module.

Now the service number is different from what

I've seen, but you can and you can change

the software, but it's not going to work

in that application.

You're not going to be firing those extra two

coils or injectors because the drivers don't

exist inside the PCM.

And so these are all, you know, battles that we

face when we're doing the control module

programming, especially doing used control module

programming, which is a service that we offer.

But there is some legwork behind it.

If you're going to try to find out, you

know, what is the correct number for this

application?

But like I said, RepairLinkShop.com, big resource.

You can use cartashparts.com.

It's actually a pretty helpful free resource as well.

Just be careful.

I wouldn't say it's 100% across the board

accurate, but it's it's pretty useful.

But those are our most frequent go-tos

when it comes to control modules.

Now for keys, keys are a whole nother animal.

We struggle with this quite often.

And this is one for us that we are directly the

ones that are ordering the part.

Now, figuring out what the correct key is for

that car in order to order it becomes the

challenge in a lot of cases.

Not only that, but when you order aftermarket

or refurb keys, sometimes the quality of said

keys can be an issue as well.

And we struggle with that.

And we've changed vendors that we've used

a couple of times.

We've been using Transponder Island as of

late, and I got to say really impressed with

the service, how quickly they can get keys to

you at a reasonable cost.

And they'll help you out if there's an issue.

There's other key suppliers where that is

definitely not the case.

And even within that, you know, we find some

issues with the keys like we've been using

ill-cos for a lot of our keys recently.

And they're pretty good, but every once in a

while you run into an issue with a key.

Same thing with a refurb, like if you get an

OEM refurb, ideally that should be your best

option.

I mean, besides buying brand new from the

dealer, I guess.

But even then we run into some issues here

and there, but even if the quality of the

key is OK, let's let's assume, OK, we got a

good quality key, you could still get the

wrong key, which is the point of this

episode is wrong parts.

And man, this really does seem to be an

ongoing issue when it comes to keys so much.

So I almost feel like the best way to do it is

if there's three different options or four

different options for said vehicle, just order

all of those keys and hopefully one of them

is going to work.

Now, of course, if it's a blade style one,

that gets tricky because like which one do

you cut first, but at least with a smart

key style, you can attempt the key.

I guess even then in that case, there are

keys that will lock once you attempt it.

I had that on a GM smart key.

There were two different FCC IDs.

This is before I knew to check the tire

pressure sensors for the frequency.

And if I would have done that, I would have

figured out that OK, these are two different

frequencies.

This is the key that I need to use.

But I tried the smart key that was the

wrong one for the car first.

The immobilizer portion of the smart key

worked, but the RF portion didn't because

it was the wrong frequency.

Unfortunately, that locked that key to that

car short of taking apart the board and

trying to unlock it.

I don't know if I could on that one.

There's tools that will do that on some.

That key's junk now.

And, you know, I wasted the cost of a

key and that whole job probably isn't

that profitable at that point, right?

And especially that that's why I've been

hesitant to do in the past because like

you order four keys for a car and those

three are oddball ones that you never see.

I mean, do you go through the hassle of

returning those?

I'm sure the key supplier doesn't like that.

Or do you just hang them on your wall at

your shop and then never use them because

it's for some European model that you're

never going to see in the U.S.

That's that's the challenge.

So getting the right key ahead of time.

We try our best.

We really do.

But there are so many things that go

wrong or you can get wrong.

And again, so there's some vehicles

where you have one option.

Right?

It's this is the key for this application

for this year.

Maybe button configuration is the only

thing that you have to pick from.

But there's cars where there are

several different options, especially

when it comes to the FCC ID, right?

This is something with key is in

Hyundai's that we battle with quite

often where they'll be two or three

different key options and the physical

key is the same.

The buttons are the same.

The frequency is the same, right?

So 315 versus 433.

But there are different FCC options.

And I've talked about it on the show

before.

I wish there was a way that you could

just check the FCC output of a key,

but it's not really possible because

it's not the ID is not transferred in

the data transmission of the key

itself.

It just operates differently.

There'll be different amplitudes.

And the way the message is transferred

is going to be different based on the

FCC ID that it has.

Now, obviously the car can recognize

one versus the other, but there's no

tool out there that has a database of

all FCC IDs that will spit it out.

If somebody eventually creates that,

I will buy it tomorrow.

But as far as I know, such thing

doesn't exist at the moment.

So where I'm going with that is if

you have a working key and it

doesn't have that number stamped on

it somewhere and some do, right?

So then, of course, you would

just use that number and when

you're ordering.

But not all of them do.

So how do you know?

Again, we can go to repairlinkshop.com.

We can use that part number and

we can order keys that way.

I've had that being correct before.

I've had that get me the wrong

key when using that factory part

number off RepairLink Shop.

I don't know exact reasoning for

that, but that's the way

that's worked in some cases.

Like I mentioned, you know,

button configuration is, you

know, important to, but that's

easy enough with like, hey, can

you send me a picture of the key?

And then we know, okay, this is

the style and these are the

buttons.

Okay.

The other problem that we've

run into, especially with smart

keys is like almost

everything will work.

And this is true of the after

market keys quite a bit.

Again, when you're using the

aftermarket keys, the quality

is not just not going to be the

same as if you're buying it

from the dealer.

And so we'll get stuff where

like everything works, but

one button on the key, right?

Like the trunk button doesn't

work or back when we're using a

different supplier, we would get

these keys where the wrong

button would do the wrong

function, right?

You would hit the unlock and

the trunk would open or

something ridiculous like that.

But sometimes you get a key

where almost everything works,

right?

You get the immobilizer

portion, that's good.

You get the this episode is

brought to you by L one

automotive training and Keith

Perkins.

If you're looking for

education on module

programming, J 25 34

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electrical diagnostics or

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Keith has a website L one

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When I first started out doing

mobile, I utilized Keith's

videos on module programming

in J 25 34 in order to get my

head wrapped around what I

would need for the tooling,

the computers, the software

setups, you know, what kind of

obstacles I would be up

against when I'm out there

programming modules on cars.

And it was a huge benefit to

me.

And I continue to use the

training videos that he has

on his website.

So I strongly recommend

checking out L one training

dot com.

The link is in the show notes.

RF portion, right, you hit the

lock or the unlock on the key.

That's good.

But then the smart key functions

won't work or even this one

portion of the smart key

functions don't work.

I had a BMW, which when you

get into the European world,

this becomes, you know, even

more challenging.

But everything worked on the

key that I programmed to it,

except when you would walk

up to the door and use

the proximity function where you

press the button on the door

handle, or I don't even think

that one had a button, but you

touch the door handle.

And if he keys in close

proximity, it's going to unlock

the doors.

That portion didn't work for

the new key I programmed in.

It did for the original.

That was just the one thing.

Everything else worked.

The prox function worked once

you were in the car and you

press the start button, but

not for the door handle.

So keys are struggle in that

way. And you know, we continue

to try to grow and have

methods to determine the correct

key and worst case scenario.

Yeah, we'll order a few so that

we have all of the options if

we're not sure.

Now, sometimes it's easy to

spot that you have the wrong

module installed on a vehicle,

sometimes not.

And where we've run into this

before is maybe we don't even

know that something has been

replaced on a vehicle.

This has been the case when we

see stuff come from the auction

quite often.

Also, you know, again, a car

can get worked on at

another repair facility and

then come to the repair facility

that is our customer and then

we're involved and we don't

know the history on the vehicle.

We don't know what was

changed. We don't even know

if something was changed.

We just know there is a problem.

So I'll give you a couple

examples of this and

the methods used to

you know, figure out that like,

oh, hey, this is not the right

modular component on this vehicle.

So first one was a 2015

Nissan Altima.

And a couple of us actually

looked at this.

Now, granted, we told the

customer what to do correctly

the first time, but

they didn't do that

or they

they were not very accurate in

their parts ordering.

And so they created the

same problem after

our first visit, we came back,

we read diagnosed it with the same

answer. But anyways,

this is a situation where

the window on the passenger

side would not operate and

they had already replaced the motor

and they had a couple switches

for the passenger side

that they were attempting to use.

We came out, we diagnosed

it, said, hey, this

driver's side switch

is incorrect for the

application.

Or I think I think actually

what Steve said the first time

that hey, this is incorrect, but

this switch is not functioning

the way that it's supposed to.

That was the information.

So I get a driver's side

switch for this thing, it's not

doing what it's supposed to.

So he gets a switch, he puts

it in, he calls us up, it's

like, hey, it's doing the same

thing. So I ended up going

back out to this one, take a

look at it. And I'm going

through it, I'm going through it.

And what I ended up finding

out is the same thing that Steve

did. But I looked into it a

little bit further, because I'm

like, OK, well, how come, you

know, two switches are not

working? Did you just get a bad

one? Well, there's two

different options on this

Nissan Altima.

You can have the auto function

or they called an anti-pinch

function for the windows

where it has the little A on

the switch, right?

So if you, you know, click

the button and hold it, it

will bring the window all the

way down or all the way up.

And you can have that either

just on the driver side or on

the driver in the passenger side.

And that completely changes the

configuration and the wiring

for this vehicle, depending

on which system that you have.

Now, by looking at the

wiring on the car and

looking at the diagrams, and

this is where I'm able to make

that distinction is number one,

there's two different diagrams

if you go into the power

windows, you know, in the

electrical diagram section of

your service information, you

can see, OK, there's two

different diagrams and you look

at the wires going to the

switches, you see, OK, the

wiring is completely different.

And in the situation where you

have auto on both sides, you

have a lint bus that goes

between the BCM and the two

switches. And if you don't

have that auto function on

both sides, you just have it

on the driver side, there's

no lint bus.

So the driver side switch

and the passenger side switch,

but the driver side switch

communicates on a lint bus

in one application and does not

in the other. Well, they had

the wrong switch on there.

They had the switch that only

had auto for the driver side,

but they had auto on both

sides of the vehicle, according

to the wiring that was on the

car. So I explain this to them

and I'm like, hey, you need to

get a switch. I already got a

switch. I'm like, well, you

need to get the right switch.

You need two A's on there.

You know, if it gets here and

only has one A on the left,

you know, the driver side

switch. OK, that's the wrong

switch. This is the wrong

switch. Get the right switch.

Get the right switch and it

worked correctly the way it was

supposed to. So that's a real

common example of things that

will run into.

But then when we're there, we

have to be able to identify

that, OK, there are different

options for this vehicle.

And I'm sure this is a pretty

common one. If you work on

these signs, you're like, OK,

that's that's just known.

That's obvious. It wasn't for

this shop. And I hadn't

personally run into it before.

But looking at the diagrams,

it becomes pretty clear that

like, OK, I need to determine

which application do I have

and then which switch is

installed. Luckily, it was

visual on this one. I didn't

even check part numbers.

I didn't need to. In this case,

it was just, hey, is there an A

stamped on this switch or not?

And, you know, pretty easy to

make that determination.

The other one we dealt with

recently was a bit more

challenging.

Now, this was a 2010

Toyota Prius and this

was a car that was from the

auction, which wasn't

disclosed to us at the

beginning.

Definitely would have been

helpful to know.

And the other part that was a

little confusing about it was

that the customer said that

their customer said this

thing was running and driving.

They moved it around and then

it stopped.

And it would not

go into park.

And I think they actually

were able to force it into

park at one point or another

and then it wouldn't come out.

But there is a

park actuator motor

or shift actuator motor on

the front of this transmission

in this Prius that's going

to, you know, lock it into

park or put it into gear.

And it's a three-phase motor.

So it gets power in on one

circuit and then it's got three

driver circuits and then a

position sensor to let

the transmission control module

know what position it's in.

Well, this thing wouldn't go,

you know, in or out of park

basically wouldn't activate

this motor.

And it was setting codes

for there was a C 2300

and then there were three

different codes all for

all three phases

of that three-phase motor.

And again, these are just driven

by the transmission control

module, which is behind the

glove box under the dash.

And these are hard faults

set every single time.

And this one definitely

beat us up a little bit,

trying to figure out what was

going on. Now, again, these

are circuit codes.

We're looking at this circuit

for the vehicle.

And what we end up

eventually finding is that

there was no power

going to this

motor on the power feed.

Right. Again, there's one power

feed and then there's going to be

three control circuits

that the TCM activates ground

on. But the TCM is looking

at these circuits

when the system is turned on

to see that is there power

there in the first place

because there should be if none

of the drivers are active, right?

It's kind of a logic check

or a circuit circuit check.

And it didn't see that.

And, you know, if we were to measure

at the TCM on these control circuits,

you would not see power there either.

Well, again, what we ended up finding

is that no power was being supplied

to it. So where does the power come

from? That's where it gets

a little interesting.

So it comes from

the integration relay,

which is in the junction block

under the hood.

Now, in order for

this relay to send

power there, there is another

circuit that is labeled

BMA out of

the TCM that basically

turns on a portion

of this integration relay.

Now, these are solid state drivers

within this relay.

It's actually it's like

a little control module.

It has a processor on the board.

But you can think of it is just

this is a control for a relay

to turn on power to go down

to the shift actuator.

Now, the TCM

was not supplying power on this

BMA circuit like it was supposed

to in order to activate this component.

Now, we had jumped

power to that

feed that goes to the motor

and it didn't fix our problem.

It actually set a shortage

power code at that point.

So it must have seen power

there when it didn't want to see power,

even though when we're trying

to activate this thing normally,

it doesn't turn on at all.

So we're not exactly sure.

And that kind of sent us for a loop

for a while. The other thing

that was confusing on this car

and that I don't have a for sure

answer for because we never got

to the bottom of this.

We did fix it, but the keyless

functions did not operate

on this car the way that they were supposed

to. So you could hit the lock

and unlock button on the fob

and nothing worked.

The car didn't respond to that.

You could put the key into the slot

on the dash and you could power up.

Now, the vehicle wouldn't ready

the ignition would turn on.

But if you had the key out of the slot,

you couldn't operate any of the keyless functions.

And we did verify the keys, you know,

got a good battery in it and everything

and the key and the key appears

to be for the vehicle.

You know, if I have a smart key that I'm

questioning, does this actually work

for this vehicle?

I'll pull the metal blade out.

And if it turns in the door, it's not

guaranteed, but it's a good sign

that that key actually belongs to that vehicle.

We didn't have any immobilizer codes.

Interestingly enough, the security light

was blinking on the dash

and I was curious

about this and we did chase the key thing

for a while. I definitely went off

on a rabbit hole trying to

I tried programming in the key

and I just kept failing and it wasn't

letting me do that.

I spent a little bit of time on that.

But I eventually went away from it

because I had no codes.

I had no security codes.

There was a couple at one point

because the battery was disconnected,

but they were in history.

But nothing was

setting in the for anti theft.

You know, because I'm thinking like,

why isn't this TCM providing

power to activate this relay?

And does it have something to do

with the key and the ignition potentially?

Well, I ended up going back to this

and at this point,

I'm going to the integration relay

that's under the hood.

And I'm looking at circuits,

you know, from the TCM and

to the shift actuator control.

And I think what I was going to try to do

was I was going to try to activate

the relay myself.

So this BMA circuit that I mentioned,

it goes between the TCM

and the integration relay.

The integration relay then sends power

out to the shift control motor

on this 2010 Prius.

Well, so I'm going to try to activate.

I'm going to be the BMA circuit

and sometimes they'll do that just to be like, OK,

does this portion of it work?

Like if I activated on

because I tried sending power directly

onto the power feed of the motor,

that didn't work.

But I want to try activating the relay

and just see what happens at this point.

I'm trying stuff to see how the car reacts.

Maybe it'll, you know, show me something

that gets me to where I need to be.

In this case, it did help

when I sent power on this BMA circuit,

which is what is supposed to be there

to activate this relay, nothing happened.

There's nothing going on.

Now, again, it's a solid state relay.

So it's not like you're going to hear a click,

but I get no power out onto the circuit.

I'm supposed to get power onto.

So then I'm wondering, OK, well, what else

is connected to this relay that,

you know, would drive it?

Now, I did have some trouble

finding the pin out in the inner workings

of this integration relay,

at least in aftermarket service information.

It was very difficult to determine

what all was going on in here

and where the ground side of the control

of this relay was.

And there's a ground going to this

integration relay.

And I think that's probably what it uses.

But I couldn't find anything clear in the diagram.

So I decided, OK, I'm just going to pull the cap off of this thing

because it's it's, you know, a flat

relay that's about the size of the palm of your hand.

And it plugs in with three connectors.

So I plug it, I take it out.

I pop this little cap off and you can see the circuit board.

Now, I know the pins like I know the pin in on the BMA.

I know the pin out that goes to the shift actuator.

And so I'm just going to look at the board and see, OK,

can I find where the ground side of this goes

to see if I can, you know, figure out just to make sure.

Like, do I have, you know, ground control?

Because as far as I know right now, this thing is not doing anything

when I attempt to activate it.

So I'm following circuits on the board.

I'm using an meter, go from the pin to here.

And I find on the board, there's pads with solder on them on the board.

But there is no driver there.

There's a bunch of other drivers for other stuff.

But it said it said FET 20.

So it's a MOSFET that would supposed to be there

or could potentially be there on this board, but it's not.

There's nothing there.

And I all made out and I don't know that it was directly connected

to the BMA circuit, but it was definitely connected to the output circuit

to go to the shift actuator.

And there's nothing there.

So it doesn't matter if even if the TCM was supplying power in that circuit,

which it wasn't.

And I guess I'll explain why I think that was.

But even if there was power there,

there's it's never going to send power to the shift actuator

because there's no driver.

It's like somebody pulled the relay out of the car

except for this, you know, isn't necessarily relay.

It's just a transistor that's soldered on to a board, but it's gone.

It's not there. And it's not like somebody took it off.

Right. That's that's not what this was.

It just wasn't equipped with it.

So this is where it gets a little confusing.

Well, why would that be?

Is this the wrong part for the car?

So we get talking and there had actually been some parts

swapping with another Prius that they had at this shop,

which caused some issues of its own, but that's a different story.

But this was the 2014 Prius.

And we take a look at the part number that's in this one

and we take a look at the part number that's in the 2014

and they're actually the same.

And that's why they're like, yeah, we had, you know,

swapped this integration relay and it didn't make a difference

depending on which one we put in there.

And I agree, it wouldn't have changed anything.

But the one that came in there,

we had installed into this 2010 Prius

did not have the driver for the circuit

that was setting the circuit codes.

So we do a little bit of digging and I was using chat

GPT for this, which actually was really helpful.

And we find that there are different versions

of this integration relay, depending on the application

that you have and if you look at previous years

and newer years than this 2010.

So there's only like a year and a half that they did this.

They put the relay or you could say the relay.

It's again, it's a driver circuit for this shift actuator

circuit into the integration relay for this 2010 only.

If you go older, there's a separate external relay.

If you go newer, there's a separate external relay.

Like the circuit is essentially the same,

but it's got an external relay.

So where I'm going with this is the part that we had

that did actually come out of something like a 2014.

I don't know when the car came with it.

When it got to the shop, probably at the auction,

getting swapped around, it came with an integration

out of a newer vehicle that for the circuit

that was setting circuit codes had an external relay.

So they didn't have the driver on the board.

So nothing was ever going to happen.

And if you go older than a 2010, it's the same thing.

Different part numbers, I think, but neither one of them

would have worked in this application.

In this application, I needed an integration relay

for this year so that it had the correct driver on the board.

So I told the shop was like, hey, here's the part number.

I did use RepairLinkShop.com got the correct part number

based off the VIN, which was different

than the one that I had in there.

And ChatGBT is actually really helpful to say like,

yeah, that's not the right part for this.

This is the right part.

And it was correct.

The part number that it gave me was matched

what I found in RepairLinkShop.com.

So, you know, if you're using, you know,

language models and stuff to help you on stuff like this,

take it with a grain of salt, double check it.

But in this case, it was very accurate.

And it actually, I had mentioned the problems

I was having and it also mentioned that like,

yes, this is definitely something that happens

if the wrong integration relay is put in there.

So if you're a Toyota tech listening,

you may have already known this

and dealt with this a hundred times initially common.

I've never seen it before.

And maybe if that's you,

you can help me explain the next part

because I told them, hey, this is for sure wrong.

We have to for sure fix this

and it's probably gonna take care of this park issue.

I told him, I was like, I don't know about the key thing.

That's weird, but it's very possible

it has something to do

because this integration relay

runs a bunch of other different circuits.

And again, finding the diagrams for it were difficult.

So instead of doing it in that moment

and just confirming like it's gonna fix everything,

I told him, put this in there, get the right one

and then see what happens

if there's more problems call us or we'll check in.

We wanna make sure it's fixed.

And turns out that fixed everything.

Everything worked once the correct integration relay was in.

So what I'm thinking is there was another power supply circuit

or some circuit that interacts with other modules

on the vehicle that was not right

when the wrong integration relay was installed.

Whatever that was was most likely preventing the TCM

from even attempting to activate that circuit.

Whatever that was was preventing the keyless functions

from working properly.

And obviously the shift actuator circuits.

And those are the codes that we have.

So that was the thing that I chased, right?

And quite often I've said this before

when you have a vehicle that has multiple problems,

pick one that you know you can get to the solution of

follow that, ignore the rest.

A lot of the time you'll end up finding the source

for all of the problems.

Not always, cars have multiple issues.

That definitely happens.

But I can't tell you how many times I've been in that situation

you're overwhelmed with like, this is wrong,

this is wrong, this is wrong.

And some things are just not as easy to follow.

Some things don't have codes.

Some things don't make sense.

But if you got a hard code, you got a circuit code,

follow that, keep going with that.

See if you can figure out what's going on there.

That's what I did here and it got me to it.

Just by, you know, I was opening up the module,

not the relay, not because I thought it was the wrong part.

I had no idea which part number was which

and it plugged in and it looked like it fit.

But going down that path is what allowed me to see that

like, oh, okay, I'm missing a driver here.

This is not the right part for this car.

So that fixed it, put the integration relay in there.

So anyways, those are just my thoughts

recently on wrong parts.

I'm sure you guys deal with this too out there

doing what we do.

So if you got a story about a wrong part,

you wanna share it, you know, put it in the Facebook group

or give me a shout, we'll have you on the podcast

and talk about it.

So these man-made issues, which wrong parts usually are,

can be very interesting.

But that's all I got for you today.

Thank you so much for listening.

Really appreciate it.

With that out of the way, let's get out there,

start fixing the world one car at a time.

["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]

Nissan Altima

Toyota Prius

About this episode

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