power mirror upgrade

[mr2Nparadise]

I had recently come into a pair of good working power mirrors and a dash switch only and decided to upgrade my original manual mirrors.

I thought someone else might be in the same boat as I was with installing power mirrors without all the existing wiring. So I hope this helps.

First of all, not sure if the wires and harnesses come standard on all models or not, but if you look , you may just find the wire connector/harness necessary to complete this install which is located left side of dash under speedo amongst the numerous wires after removing the panel directly under the speedo and steering column.

Then all you need is the mirrors and the dash control switch, which I picked up off a totalled 2 that was at the pick n pull.


First, you'll need to remove the triangle cover where the mirror is: If your trim is original like mine.......Be very careful doing this part or you could end up like me and breaking the retaining peg for both sides...Just be really gentle and start at the top using a small flat head to move the piece away from the mirror bracket. When this comes apart, you simply need to pull up and away to remove the little hooks that hold this piece in place at the bottom
Was having issues with the pics posting right, so refer to image 1 for removal and image 7 for what will happen when it is old and brittle and breaks.


Then remove the door panel trim by removing the screws where indicated:

philips head screw driver for this part, except the window crank, you need a small flat head to pop the clip that retains the crank. do this by inserting the flathead in between the base of crank and door panel itself, you will see a little horseshoe clip, really easy to pop off
image 2 below


Next, prepare the wire ends for connecting and running wire, which this install had quite a few to do. I ended up running wires going from the mirrors to the control switch area in dash. There is a brown, red and red/green wire. Which will go to the area just below the speedo on the left of dash. Be sure to tag the wires as to which side and color the wires are. When this comes together there will be lots of wires and I ended up having to pull all the wires back out and tagging them. I used green wire I had laying around, but different colored wire would help here too. I took the time to tape the wires too at about 6 inch intervals to keep them together and snug.
image 3

When beginning to run the lead wires coming from the mirrors you will want to put the wires in the valley provided in the rubber trim so that your triangle cover trim will fit properly afterwards. To do this, peel up the rubber in yellow with a small screwdriver just far enough to see the little canal that the wires go down into the door and up into the dash on their way to the control switch. I found that the mirror bracket actually extends a little down into the door. Be sure to use a little flat head to push the wires so that they are running on the side of bracket closest to the beginning of door, towards front of car. This insures the wires do not get caught up in the window coming up or down.
Image 4

When you have the wires started from each side, just find where to reasonable run these wires to hide them and keep them from harm, you end up in the area as indicated below. (side note: there is a grommet in the front bottom of door, but mine had no holes so I simply ran wires out the bottom of door panel itself. You could even put a hole in the grommet to run wires. I also used black tape to cover the wires coming right out of door trim. Makes for a more finished look. You don't really even see the wires coming from door to car frame.) Initially, you may have to search for the wiring harness that is a 7 pin rectangle connector. Once again, not sure if all models have this, but I just happen to luck out so I was very happy. The red is the general area where I located the mirror harness. The blue is the switch that is connected to the harness now.
image 5

The next step is to prepare the harness to accept all the wiring you have run...The harness has power-pink/blue, ground-white/black, these I did not do anything with.

You will connect both sides brown lead to the brown wire in harness.

I don't recall which side was which, but they are grouped together like this, blue and light green and the other is the red and red/green.
For example: You will connect the red from left side to Blue in harness and the red/green from left side to the light green wire in harness.

Then connect the red from the right side to the red in harness and the red/green from right to red/green in harness. Make sure to connect the switch before putting everything back to make sure the appropriate side is being controlled when acivated by the left and right switch . Initially, I did this backwards and I simply switched the wires accordingly. I could not get this pic to come out, but you will get the general idea.
Image 6

Lastly, is putting the control switch in the dash where it belongs. I found the wires from the harness were very short and they barely stick out of the dash once the lower trim below speedo is replaced. Be sure to position the harness somewhat close to the square hole in dash, otherwise you fish around for it and like me, ended up removing the trim again so that I could put a wire connected to harness so that I could pull it through the hole to connect to the switch.
Image7

Walla, my baby has power mirrors!!! Good luck with yours.