Is There A Cover Missing?

[Sagitar]

Last week I took my Gen3 Prius T-Spirit to the dealer for the ECU update and all is well.

This morning I lifted the bonnet to do my regular fluids levels checks and noticed a little bunch of wires on a connector that I had not noticed before.

Here they are

They look as though they ought to have a cover over them and I wondered whether there was a cover that had somehow been removed in the ECU update.

I'm probably wrong and it is likely just to be my pathetic memory playing up, but I would feel easier if someone with a Gen 3 could lift the bonnet and assure me that their arrangement is the same as mine.

Thanks in advance.

[phil4]

Yep, seen that on mine, and it's yet to have any work done on it. Looked very odd to me, to have such fragile looking wires so exposed and vulnerable, lets hope they ain't anything important.

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Mine's the same too - before and after the update. Does strike me a little weird that such fragile wires are exposed but I guess there's a reason.

[Sagitar]

Yep, seen that on mine, and it's yet to have any work done on it. Looked very odd to me, to have such fragile looking wires so exposed and vulnerable, lets hope they ain't anything important.

Thanks Phil,(and Grumpy Cabbie) you've put my mind at rest . . . . .

[Ancient Nerd]

Interesting. I hadn't noticed it on mine because the thick black cable runs over the top of the plug, rather than beside it. Good job there's a bonnet in place, or there'd be one very soggy connector.

I just don't see why every other connector is covered, whereas this one is unprotected. It looks a bit like a possible cause of future trouble.

[Sagitar]

Good job there's a bonnet in place, or there'd be one very soggy connector. It looks a bit like a possible cause of future trouble.

That was my first thought - the connections are in a small "well" and if water did get under the bonnet they would be sitting in an undrained pool. When I looked carefully, I noticed that the cover on the larger connector just above the exposed one is not actually water-tight, so it would suffer in the same way, even though it has a cover.

I guess Toyota are confident that water will not get to that area anyway.

Thinking about it brought back memories of driving an Austin 1300 back in the 1960s. The engine tended to stop every time there was heavy rain because the unprotected distributor was right behind the radiator grill. I cured it by putting a plastics bag over the distributer and eventually the manufacturer recalled it and fitted a moulded plastics shield. Happy days (not).