How to fix a broken screen for under $150

Hey all, I posted a thread about needing help with a busted screen for my '16 T4R. With the help of some fine folks on this forum, I was able to track down a screen from china and get it installed for around $140 and change shipped. Here is the how to on doing it.


So, for starters, the site i used is called www.opuradio.com . They answered questions and offered help with which screen I needed ( although I already had done the research myself). I was skeptical at first, but aside from a slight hold up because of national holiday week in China, they responded to my emails and had the package at my door 5 days later.

Onto the instal. I'm not going to go into how to pull out your stereo because there are plenty of youtube videos that go into detail about that. I'm going to focus on once its out and getting the old screen removed and the new one in.


Here is your stereo pulled out. I put it on a sweatshirt i had laying around to 1) not scratch the knobs that stick out, and 2) not damage the new screen once it was in and i was tiring it all up.
you first want to remove the hard drive which is the smaller of the two components. You do this for easier access to one of the screws holding the radio in place. this screw is covered with a silver round tab about the size of a dime. I had removed it to find the model number earlier and didn't take a picture of it, but you can't miss it. Once you remove the hard drive, remove the tab and you will see the screw under neath it. Remove that, and then remove the two screws on the bottom corner and top recessed corners. If you look at the pic above of the stereo pulled out, you will see a hole to the top right where I have already removed the screw. there is another matching one on the top left side. At this point, you will have to use a small flathead screw driver and some finesse but the entire radio and metal plate you see in the picture comes off the plastic face piece. BE CAREFUL NOT TO JUST YANK IT OFF, IT IS CONNECTED BY FLAT RIBBON TO THE SCREEN ITSELF.

So as you can see if you were to lift it off you could damage the ribbon. take a small circuit board hook and flip up the black locking clip on top of the ribbon to remove it and then you can put that part of the radio to the side.


Now your left with this. As you can see, you'll have to disconnect the ribbons the same way you did for the two big ones. I disconnected the red and white ribbon on the right side before I unscrewed the metal face plate.

Then I unscrewed the faceplate, disconnected the other ribbons and was ready to rotate the circuit board 90 degrees toward myself. There is a soldered ground wire connected to the circuit board which is why you can't completely remove it.
Now you cab get to the screen. Make sure all the ribbons have been removed, and unscrew the four screws holding the screen in. It should lift straight out. You will need to remove the screen from its basket and put the new screen in it's place.
Old screen still in the basket and new screen just out of the plastic. You'll need to take off the tape holding all the ribbons in place. Once the new screen is in the basket, you can now reverse the process and put everything back together.
As always, before you secure everything back in, give a quick check to see everything is working right. I had taken my SD card out while my screen was broken not knowing that is where they store the map data. I had to go find it and put it back in.

So there you have it. My dealer wanted $1300 to fix this. I found an outside shop that would do it for $700. Thanks to the people on this forum, I got it done for $140 and change. Hope this helps out anyone in the same predicament I was in!

 

Great writeup.

Is there any chance of providing larger pics? The current pics are quite small.

Also, is there a part number for the screen you purchased from opuradio?

 

Well done.

 

So, the part number differs depending on which model t4r or tacoma you have. Navi\no navi, JBL and so on. You need to pull the radio, and take the number from the side of the unit itself. As for the pics, let me see if i can edit them to make them bigger.

UPDATE- Just tried to get the pics larger. No dice. Sorry everyone.

 

Glad it worked for you.

 

Great information thanks for sharing!

 

Just a little addition to your how too. The 2016 and down radios are built a little different. After removing the screws to the cover on the main board and moving the board 90 degrees you also have to take the left and right boards off to access the screws on the display. The knobs that attach to these boards just pull off with a little effort. My problem was the touch screen had some bad scratches in it and parts of the screen refused to work. Local wrecking yard had a non gps one that they said was dead but the screen looked OK. So taking a gamble and $50 later and I am back in business. Like Lodi781 said watch the ribbon connectors, snapped a couple of locking tabs on the doner radio, best to use the correct tools or take it to an electronics place if you are not confident. Once broken the ribbon will not lock in place and the radio is probably toast.

 

Just wanted to give an update. I had ordered from the site I originally put in the description with no issues at all, aside from it was directly from china. I ordered twice from them with no issues. I just found a place in Arizona that has the screens for $129 and if you want, they will fix it for you for a total of somewhere around $230 I think. So just wanted to put up the link if anyone is interested.

https://www.autotechnologyrepair.com/