A guide to replacing the touch screen on a Toyota RAV4 4th generation car (XA40, 2013-2018)

The problem. 

The touchscreen on my 2016 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid has become gradually less accurate and less responsive over the years until it finally stopped responding completely. This is, I have discovered, not an unusual thing to happen. I lived with it for a while, just streaming media from my phone via Bluetooth but I was finally prompted to try and do something about it when I got an incoming SMS message and the only way to remove the notification from the car’s screen was to turn the car off and on again.

I considered upgrading the head unit to something more modern with Carplay & Android Auto and there are plenty of units available, mostly Chinesium but from better known makes if you want to get spendy. Unfortunately trying to find one which will easily integrate with the car’s systems, particularly the reversing camera and steering wheel controls is a non-trivial exercise. It’s a confusing mess which will almost certainly require obtaining extra bits apart from a new head unit and Car Audio dealers are very happy to sell you 6” of wire with a couple of plugs on for £40 which might or might not work.

However while searching I discovered that replacement touch screen digitiser panels for the Toyota head unit (which is actually made by Panasonic) are available for less than £30. It seemed like that was worth a punt since I had little to lose.

I searched eBay for TOYOTA RAV 4 2013-18 HEAD UNIT SAT NAV TOUCH SCREEN DIGITIZER and placed an order from eBay seller siansmobiles (there were several other sellers too) which arrived within 48 hours.

User Remmerv on the rav4world.com forum has posted a guide to replacing the digitiser panel which I found helpful. It’s downloadable as a PDF.

Here I’m going to expand on that guide covering some other points and some issues that I came across while doing the job. I hope these notes will be of use to anyone carrying out the same task.

My unit is the version without a CD drive and with the navigation package, Toyota refer to this as Toyota Touch 2 with Go. The process for other head units will be broadly similar and in some instances simpler.

Tools required: 

• 10mm socket or box spanner. 
• Small Phillips screwdriver (actually the screws might be JIS but a Phillips works if you’re careful). 
• 8mm socket or ring spanner. 
• Spudger or thin flat screwdriver.

Optional tools: 

• Plastic car trim removal tool. 
• Small needle-nose pliers.

Removing the head unit from the car. 

The first task is to extract the unit from the car, you might even want to do that before ordering the replacement panel if you want to check the model number but I was confident that I’d identified the unit correctly. 

There are videos of varying quality on YouTube showing how to remove the unit, usually made by irritating Americans and mainly more about replacing the head unit with some oversized Android screen. It’s really not complicated to do though.

First task is to remove the long silver trim along the upper edge of the dashboard which has the Hazard Lights button and warning lamp panel behind it. This is held in by plastic retainers, just grip the trim panel with your fingers and pull it directly towards you, starting at the passenger door end and it will pop straight off.

Next remove the two air vents either side of the head unit. Again these just plug in to retainers and can be pulled/wiggled out with your fingers. I found pulling out the top a bit then the bottom worked best. If you don’t have strong fingers a plastic trim removal tool might be helpful.

Now remove the small hazard light switch & warning light panel above the head unit in it’s yellow plastic carrier, this is held at each end and just needs to be wiggled and pulled out. There is no need to unplug it, just flip it over and leave it on top of the dashboard.

You are now ready to remove the head unit. This is held in by four 10mm hex head screws, two at the top and two low on the sides of the unit. At least there are supposed to be four, in my case Toyota had economised by omitting the lower right hand screw at the factory. You will need a suitable 10mm socket or box spanner to reach and remove these screws. Be careful not to drop them when taking them out for if you do they will disappear never to be seen again.

 Place a soft cloth over the heater control panel to avoid scratching it and pull the head unit towards you to release it from the mountings. There is plenty of slack in the cables to allow the unit to come out far enough to be tilted down so that you can remove the wiring plugs on the rear. Remove all the plugs from the back of the unit except the two which link the two parts of the unit together which can be left connected for now. All the plugs have retaining catches which need to be pressed before they can be pulled out. All the plugs are different so they cannot be mixed up - they will only go back in the right places. I still took a photo anyway. On my car one socket was not in use, having the photo later stopped me looking behind the dash for a “missing” plug.

 You can now take the head unit out of the car to a bench or table to carry out the next steps.

Changing the touchscreen digitiser. 

With the head unit on the bench the first stage of disassembly is to remove the lower piggy-back unit if present - I think this is the “with Go” part. This is fixed to the side frames with four 8mm screws. These have hex + crosspoint heads. Two of mine were very tight indeed and they appear to be made of cheese. Seriously, use an 8mm socket or ring spanner, the cross point for a screwdriver will round out as soon as you apply any force.

 Disconnect the cables which connect to the main unit and the antenna cable on the front of the lower unit and put the lower unit to one side.

You now have access to two screws which need to be removed from the metal plate behind the front of the unit. One of these holds the socket for the antenna plug that you disconnected in the previous step. You will need to wiggle this socket out of its clear plastic holder along with its thin cable because it needs to be able to pass through the hole behind it later.

Six very small screws around the edges of the metal chassis plate hold the plastic front cover in place. Remove these and then carefully lift the four plastic clips, two at the top two at the bottom of the plastic front cover and easy the front cover away from the chassis. A spudger or thin flat screwdriver will help. Possibly two since the clips you undid will try to click back into place while you’re undoing the others.

Fold the front cover down away from the chassis taking care not to damage the two large ribbon cables connecting the front to the back of the head unit. All the ribbon cable connectors have a black hinging locking strip which can be opened by pulling it upwards with your fingernail going over the flat cable towards the connector. Disconnect the two large ribbon cables, draw the grey antenna cable through the hole in the chassis and place the chassis to one side to continue working on the front panel.

The next step is to remove the metal shielding plate which partially covers the printed circuit board. This is secured by four screws at the corners. Remove the screws noting that one of them also holds a small metal bracket with a screw hole in the top. Make a note of which way this bracket is orientated because it is about to fall off. Once the screws are out lift the metal plate away, you might need to gently lever the long edge up to clear the edge of the PCB.

With the metal plate off remove the ribbon cables for the side buttons and the digitiser panel. Undo the three screws that hold the left side button panel in place and remove it along with its rubber membrane. Ease the black antenna wires out of their metal hooks.

 Remove the four screws holding the metal plate carrying the PCB and the screen to the plastic front cover and lift the screen assemble away from the front cover. The digitiser panel is laid loose between screen and front cover so should remain in the cover but might with age be stuck to the screen and like mine will come out with it. Carefully separate the two and remove the old digitiser panel.

Remove the protective film from both sides of your new digitiser panel and lay it in the plastic front panel with the ribbon cable coming up. Spend a couple of minutes wondering why the panel won’t lay flat before you realise that the screen in the head unit is actually angled slightly towards the driver and the bezel that the digitiser is laying on is not the same depth on each side so not flat is actually correct.

Clean the display screen and replace the screen and PCB assembly on top of the digitiser panel making everything is lined up correctly and that the antenna cables are not trapped under the edge of the assembly before putting the four retaining screws back in.

Reconnect the digitiser ribbon cable ensuring that the slack in the cable does not interfere with the right hand side buttons.

Replace the left side button panel ensuring that the membrane is properly located. Reconnect all the ribbon cables and clip the antenna wires back into place. At least one ribbon cable will fight you because it’s in the nature of ribbon cables to do so, gentle persistence might be required. Reassemble the front panel to the chassis remembering to feed the antenna wire back through the hole.

Then reassemble the unit in the reverse order to which you took it apart, not forgetting to reconnect the cables linking the two parts of the unit.

Testing the repaired unit. 

Take the rebuilt head unit back to the car and reconnect all the cables making sure that the connectors click fully home.

Check that everything is working as it should before fixing the unit back in place and replacing the vents and dashboard trim. (Including the reversing camera otherwise you’ll be coming back out later to check because you suddenly remembered that bit half way through your cup of coffee.)

Once happy that all is functioning as it should push the head unit back into place on its mounts and fix with the four (ish) 10mm screws. Refit the hazard light switch & warning light panel. Refit the vents and then the top dashboard trim, both of which should just 'plug' back into place.

I did not need to enter any codes after reconnecting the head unit and indeed it had remembered the settings and phone book entries, messages etc. from before it was disconnected.

Marvel that your Toyota’s touch screen now responds to fondling again and you can even enter destination addresses into the years-out-of-date SatNav!

Then wonder where this was supposed to go 😀

 A PDF version of this guide is available here.