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Sunday, December 11, 2005

Hacking a 2005 Toyota Corolla

A few months ago, fed up with my gas bills, I purchased a 2005 Corolla XRS. Overall, I have been extremely happy with the vehicle, but there's one thing about it that's been driving me crazy, and I've mentioned it before. It's the paternalistic #$#& beeping. It emits a relentess shrill beep whilst in reverse and more of the same when the passenger isn't buckled up (which I recommend, but it turns into annoying "alright already!" when the passenger is buckling up or has to unbuckle for some reason).

I spent some time searching the Internet looking for hacks. In various Toyota forums on the Net, numerous complaints have been made and countless frustrations voiced regarding the beeping. Profoundly irritating to me are the forum members who elicited responses such as "Hey, the beeping is there for your own good! Better annoyed than dead!" The wit and wisdom of folks impervious to the idea of individuals being able to buckle up without first being aurally violated.

The warranted solution really calls for a wire cutter or, better yet, wrapping a white-knuckled fist around a select wire and jerking a tricep while grunting a choice expletive. But! I did manage to find a hack to kill the passenger seat belt beep. As I recall, I finally got it to work with the following steps:

1. Set odometer to normal (not Trip A or Trip B).
2. Turned ignition off.
3. Ensured driver seat belt was unbuckled.
4. Turned ignition on (don't start).
5. Gymnastics: With left hand grabbed seat belt. With right, pressed and held trip clock reset.
6. Held trip clock down for around 15 seconds.
7. Buckled driver seat belt.
8. Unbuckled driver seat belt.
9. Odometer switched into edit mode.
10. Pressed trip clock until odomter indicated beep in OFF mode.
11. Turned ignition off.

Voila! No more annoying passenger beep.

I'm still looking for a hack to eliminate the beep that occurs when the vehicle is in reverse.

1 Comments:

Blogger Nick said...

Amen to that. I wear my seatbelt, but good grief, let me put my backpack on the passenger side w/o it being a federal offense please. It's really bad when you are giving someone a ride and you have to say "please put your seatbelt on before my car embarrasses you." I'm going out to try your hack right away.

11:08 AM  

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