I’ve probably said before that, if I were a politician, I’d make it illegal for car manufacturers to have a “Maintenance Required” light that comes on to “remind” you to take your car in for service when nothing’s wrong. I’d do that right after I ended the racket that is contact lenses needing prescriptions re-issued every year.<\/p>\n
But if you drive a fairly recent Toyota, it seems that there’s a trick to reset the service monitor. With the ignition on, make sure the odometer is showing your total mileage (not a trip odometer). Turn the key off, push in the odometer reset button, and hold it in while turning the car back on. It should start by showing “—–“, and decrementing until it shows “-,” and then it’ll reset your maintenance reminder as if you’ve just had your car serviced.<\/p>\n
I haven’t personally confirmed this (I drive an ’03, which was made before they started their racket), but I saw it mentioned and poked around, finding several other sites that corroborate this method. YMMV (no pun intended!), but I know plenty of people who find the light a major nuisance.<\/p>\n
(You know what else is a racket? I decided to change my own oil instead of bringing the car in for its 75,000 mile tuneup, but in the course of figuring out how the heck I have to do it, I’ve seen that the oil filter is right under the exhaust manifold, and getting to that, or draining my oil, apparently requires undoing a billion screws underneath the car to remove the skid plate… And most places recommend jacking up the front of the car so you have enough room. It’s as if they went out of their way to make sure drivers couldn’t easily do maintenance on their own, so that you have to take it in for service. And if your car is newer than mine, they display their maintenance advertisement light to make sure you do.)<\/p>\n
Edit: Just found another source suggesting that, for some newer Highlanders, you have to be on Trip A, not the overall odometer, for this to work. And it seems as if you can just turn the car to “Acc” or similar, rather than actually starting the engine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve probably said before that, if I were a politician, I’d make it illegal for car manufacturers to have a “Maintenance Required” light that comes on to “remind” you to take your car in for service when nothing’s wrong. I’d … Continue reading