Recently someone on here mentioned their battery was on the way out..
Now, as most of you know, last years I exchanged my 2009 i30 for a 2013 Corolla Ascent Sport.
The i30 battery lasted nearly 8 years.
The Corolla one died the other day. No big deal. Still well within the acceptable life span as far as I’m concerned.
But!
The Corolla Head Unit has an SD card slot and the included SD card carries the program which runs the head unit. Radio, CC player, Bluetooth, USB, reversing camera etc.
Apparently, when the battery dies, it somehow spiked the SD card. So, no working head unit. I Googled, figuring I would be able to download the program but couldn’t find it. I did find a lot of complaints about the difficulty in getting a replacement card.
Not just the Corolla. The Hi Lux, the T86 (and the Subaru equivalent) etc.
Some even reported being supplied the car without the card. Radio will still run until you disconnect the battery.
And most reported Toyota were less than helpful.
I tried to recover the files but they had been damaged, not deleted.
So, ready for battle, I took myself off to Sunshine Toyota’s spare parts department up the road a way.
Öh! The guy said. “Ïs it the non GPS version head unit?” I handed him the offending SD card. He checked the part number against some handwritten notes he had in a small notebook on his desk and informed me one would be here by Monday morning. $66.
The fact that he knew about it immediately AND had the part number written down suggests it’s not an uncommon problem so I’m at a loss to explain all the aggro on the web.
But I don’t care.
Well done, Sunshine Toyota.
Just to finish this off. When I inserted the new card, everything came back as it was. All my radio presets were still there. And interestingly, the unit connected much more quickly to my phone's bluetooth. Normally it could take a minute or more. Now, by the time I put the car in gear, the phone connection is made.
