Nav dies and airbag light comes on

[Rob Van Handel]

I have a 2011 Sequoia. The issue I've been having is that at random the radio/nav will go completely dark, the airbag light comes on, the VSC light comes on, and it stays that way for 15 minutes to several hours. Then also at random the radio/nav will factory reset and the lights go out and everything is normal until it happens again maybe a few days later maybe a few minutes. Both a local shop and a local Toyota dealer have looked at it and had no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[tbplus10]

Im betting both shops told you theres a short somewhere in the wire harness causing a disruption of power.
Possibly a corroded connection.
The problem with a short is it can take many hours of troubleshooting to find the bad wire or connection, most owners just cant or wont pay for the extensive amount of troubleshooting required.
Has either shop recommended replacing a specific wire harness?
Either way it will be expensive.
Truthfully many vehicles with problems like this end up getting traded in on a good day when their not having problems, and become someone elses problem.

 

[rickc5]

Totally agree that intermittent electrical/electronic gremlins/bugs/failures are the hardest to find and fix. It may take hours of troubleshooting by a highly-paid tech to finally discover the source of the problem. This can literally cost thousands of dollars if it takes a long time. The question Rob needs to answer is: How much are you willing to spend on a 8-9 year old Sequoia to fix this? Might be good to think about this for awhile, as ya gotta know when to quit.

It's also true that vehicles with strange, intermittent problems wind up getting traded in. Before we bought our new Tundra, we test drove a 2017 Tundra Platinum with only 21K miles from our local Toyota dealer. This thing was FULL of problems that hadn't been found/fixed: The engine ran very rough when idling, the exhaust was overly loud and none of the dash lights worked (?). Needless to say, we ran away from that Tundra in a hurry.