2001 Prius Cruise Control -- Intro

2001 Prius Cruise Control

INTRO PARTS BRAKE SWITCH		BATTERY AIRBAG STEERING WHEEL WIRING		COWL I COWL II REASSEMBLY CRUISE
Introduction

We love our Prius. Actually, we love our Priuses... Prii? Priusus? Whatever. We own two of these wonderful vehicles; but, they didn't have cruise control.

Inspired by Alex Karahalios' write up on egroups about installing cruise control we decided to do it ourselves. While Alex ordered the $600 cruise control steering wheel assembly, we decided to just order the $120 switch and modify the existing steering wheel to accommodate it. We've done it twice now, and the second time we put together this web documentary on how we did it.

If you choose to follow in our footsteps, please pay close attention to these points:

You are responsible for what you do. What follows worked on our cars, but we know nothing about yours. If you don't feel confident you can do this, and trouble shoot the random problems that come up, and know when to give up and pay a mechanic to finish it, don't attempt this.
You will be handling the airbag system. This can be dangerous. So be careful.
Read all these instructions first. Really. Just like in elementary school.
This may or may not invalidate some part of your warranty. Beats us!
The result will look good, but not as perfect as buying the cruise control steering wheel. Though we think the difference is pretty inconsequential.
Cruise control is nice. Very nice.

And just to make sure that we are absolutely clear:

Toyota has not authorized this web site, the activity we describe, nor the safety of what we've done.
We are not responsible for any damage to your car, yourself or others that may occur if you follow these instructions.

We aimed this write up at people who have average do-it-yourself skills. We included helpful hints that might be obvious to the more experienced mechanic. We also tried to use only commonly available tools. There are some cases where a less common tool like a drill-press would have been easier (and was available to us), but we did the job without it so we could be sure it could be done. If you have access to more appropriate tools, by all means use 'em. Lastly, we took lots pictures. You can click on most of the smaller images to get a full-page version.

So if you're ready to cruise, read on...

—

John, Kelly & Mark

John Horigan did much of the labor on the second car we did
Kelly O'Brien did the conversion on the first car and refined most of the techniques
Mark Lentczner took lots of pictures and created this web site

March 27th:
Thanks to the many who sent suggestions in the last two weeks. In response we've made the following changes:

Several minor text changes for clarity
Added torque specifications
Added a suggestion about removing the negative battery cable rather than the positive
Re-wrote section on brake switch removal with new do-it-yourself options
Corrected procedure for removing pop-rivets on battery cover.

Introduction