My Prius-Home Broke in Florida... TWICE! & Retirement In-Training. Combo Meter Repair & Diagnosis.

Hi friends, I'm Nikki Delventhal. It's always been my unconventional dream to live out of my Prius full-time to explore the Americas and its natural beauty. So in the winter of 2019 going into 2020, I hit the road and never looked back. A year in, the unexpected happened. I was camping in the desert and set for a remote hiking trail in the middle of nowhere. An abandoned puppy came chasing after my car and joined me for my hike. He melted my heart and changed my life, and he's been with me ever since. My best friend and my little car camper. That's his name, Camper. We're so honored to have you along for our journey, so please subscribe, turn on notifications, and come along with us. Good morning everybody, Camper and I are tuning in from the home of the world's largest squirrel population. I'm not sure if that's true, but Camper knows what squirrels are now. Forget about sleeping. When I just started the car and my combination meter is definitely broken. The backup camera isn't working, the car won't power off without overriding the system, and the dash is completely black. So we're gonna, we're gonna fix the car today. I mean it's not really broken down. With a bad combination meter you can still drive it, you just won't know how fast you're going, you won't know how much gas you have, and the backup camera won't work. Change of plans. A day in the life in Florida, but today is a day in the life on a day when your car isn't working, right? Your house is gonna have issues, your car is gonna have issues, and you gotta fix it. You know when something like this happens I'll get an Airbnb or a hotel or fix it myself and find a place where it's possible. In this case I don't want to mess with a combination meter. I just called a guy in West Palm Beach area. Reason being is I have grandparents there, it's only a couple hours drive, and I'll get to see family. Oh and it's just so great because now I can save money and I don't have to get a hotel. By the way, the weather down here is freaking amazing. Okay, this is how much stuff fits in the dash and the center console. A missing spoon, still not a fork. That fork bandit still has all my forks. Be right back while I disassemble my kitchen. I do this every single time I need to drain the water and refill ice and repack my food. For anyone wondering it's been about a month since I fixed the leak in the hatch. It worked. It just rained on my way down here and not a drop. No water, so we're good. Also everyone asking where the spare is, it's under the compartment with all the tools. Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please, everything camper and I own. Well I'm driving to the hybrid specialist and I'm really excited. He is supposed to be one of the best in the area. He is in Lake Park, Florida. It's called Exclusively Hybrid. A really knowledgeable guy, super friendly, very excited about that. Two, three, double click. Car's off, let's get it fixed. Hey Alex. Hi. This is Alex you guys. All right, drop it off my baby. When you're working on this you're gonna have to take all this out, right? Correct. So both of these come out, the front panel comes out, all the vents come out, the top comes out, the multi-function display comes out, and then the actual motherboard is on the back side of where your screen is. Yeah. On the bottom, you see? Yeah. So this is like an old piece. Right. Oh, so when it's old like mine it's very possible that it can crack. Correct. Okay, now I'm just over here, a little stoop kid, waiting for a ride. I'm so happy I left my car with him. You guys thought we looked good before. Look at us in retirement. Yay. What do you think camp? I know what's in there. You sit around and you look adorable all day. Okay, now we're ready to go. Camper sets the pace. Anyone wondering? I still do this when I'm in a house. Grandpa made a map. Grandpa, I found the map. I found the map. We're gonna go on a treasure hunt. I found the map you made. Where does this map take us? To the pool. But this was on sale. Bargain. Buy one, get one. I'm going to be on the street. Find something. You make a right. Are you guys talking about directions as always? Wouldn't you make a black? Will you help me? Okay, how's this line? Camper's first dog park. Who's happy? Happy birthday. Yeah, we're winning. You ready? Come on baby. Come on. All right, we made it. There she is. Hi. Well, if you do that, then the miles will not be actual miles. And then you have to acknowledge that when you're selling the car. When we fix your actual board, these are the same miles. Nothing's changed. So you're better off fixing it versus replacing it and having someone match the miles. Correct, because replacing the miles or not saying that they're actual miles is actually a federal offense. So anybody messing with the miles on cars, it is asking for trouble. Right. So this is the easiest way to do it. We take your actual motherboard, fixing it, putting it back in. It's also a lot cheaper. Yeah. If you do a brand new board, it'll cost you about $1,100 to $1,200. They will put the right miles on there for you, but it's going to also take about a week or so. As you can see, like I said, we have to take everything off. All the vents, the whole top, everything comes off from across the airbag. Everything has to come out. Wow. Take a bow. Thank you. Wait, first, we're going to check the backup camera. Make sure it's working. We're back on. It works. Hey, Nikki, how'd you do that? Oh, you know, just backed up into the garage. Also snacks. Not embarrassed at all. Alex says he has the part, so I'm heading there now. It's just from a gold Prius that he was taking apart. Totally cool with that. This might sound kind of weird, but I'm kind of excited it's going to have a different color on the back for character building. I mean, I could leave it like that. Duct tape is even more character. It'll match the zip ties up front. Have you seen these zip tie jobs? Look at that. Oh, yeah. Sexy thing. Always have zip ties in your car. You never know. And gorilla tape and duct tape and I don't know, a bunch of stuff. This is what happens when you're back into the garage, right? Garage door. To be honest, I probably would have kept it, but you figure you could get water inside and that just wouldn't be fun. And a cleaning service. Who am I? Fingerprints now. So they can't catch you? No. While I'm over here, we're getting tints. One thing I do recommend, though, if you're getting tints, think about where you're going to be traveling because there are different tint laws in every state. Camper, can I please have the rain guards? Yep. Camper's helping me open the rain guards. I really hope this is better than the last one. Now we're going to be safe from the rain. Okay. Just showing you really, really fast why we're not putting the rain guards on now because when it rains, the water will get in right here. I'm just testing this on my grandmother's Prius because I can't roll my windows down for two weeks. So back to square one with the rain guards. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments. Thanks for watching, everybody. Don't forget, like, subscribe, share with your friends, turn on notifications, and Nikki and I will teach you everything you need to know and show you everything you need to see. That's right, Camper. Thanks for watching. See you next time. No, I got it. I got you to it. I think this is working. And then what are you going to do? Then I have to press this and your name comes up. I press your name. Now these are all your videos. Now how do you get points? No, I click. Right, it's all here. So you have to hit that and you have to watch a commercial and that's it. Watch the videos so she can get points. I'll get you a point later. What are you going to do to get me a point? I'm going to, here, Nicole, I'm going to put on how to build your platform in your car. Okay, I hit that. What did I get? What did you say? You got a point. The doctor couldn't see anything, but right over here, there's no hole or something. Don't knock out grandma.