KDSS Service

Here's a few photos of a service that anyone with KDSS that drives in hostile winter conditions of sand and salt should consider. For those who aren't aware where their KDSS controls are located, they are just behind the rocker panel, below the driver's side door.

The KDSS is protected by a fairly heavy duty skid plate that is held on by a couple of 12mm bolts. Just undo these and the cover will fall off revealing the problem.


This is on a 2018 ORP after one winter. Pretty bad! I keep it pressure washed and try to get into this area over the winter months, but its hard to give it a thorough cleaning with the cover on. Looking at this, one has to wonder if Toyota couldn't have found a more protected place to locate this unit. I can't see those fine little wires standing up to this kind of normal torture for too many years without regular service.

Here's what was inside the cover. I live in a snow belt in central Ontario, which is probably as extreme as it gets, but anyone who experiences winter will likely have the same result.

Here's the unit after being hand washed with soapy water using a soft wash brush. The last time the dealer inspected the vehicle at 25,000 Km, I asked them to pull this cover and hose it off, and the service guy said, "we don't do that because its not prescribed by Toyota". haha.


Here's the cover cleaned up and ready for re installation. Total time involved - 20 minutes. Easy.

 

Damn!

 

Yikes! Good info to know, thanks for sharing!

 

Great information! This popped up awhile ago, where the buildup actually caused an issue with the system. Thank you for reminding me!

I'm going to have to make it a point to remove that periodically and clean it out.

 

Thank you for the info and details

 

good info, thanks for sharing

 

Great info, going to do this today.

 

Thanks for sharing this. Stupid question but - do you need to tighten these bolts to a certain torque when you reinstall the kdss skidplate or just tighten to a snug fit ? I live in the Rockies and am going to clean this out this weekend but do not have a torque wrench

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

I drop mine after every winter now and clean everything off and put dielectric grease (well, they gave me spark plug grease last time and told me it was the same thing). On my list of spring cleaning now that it's starting to warm up this year

Thank goodness for this forum - that's where I heard about it. Threads like this are important because like you said, I don't think it's in the manual that I remember and dealers sure as shit don't say anything

 

Thanks for the info and the headsup

 

I've always just put them snug. So far, so good.

I'm glad this thread popped up, because I haven't removed my skid plate in awhile. I tend to do it after trips where it gets mud in it, but sometimes I neglect it during the winter.