D.I.Y. Power Side Mirror install (Hard wire)

shagymc
Club4AG Expert
Posts: 353
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:43 pm

D.I.Y. Power Side Mirror install (Hard wire)

Postby shagymc » Fri Aug 15, 2014 3:45 pm

Hey guys, Just finished wiring these up and it was really quite easy. The first thing I did was find the factory plug for the actual switch to the left of the steering column. I have no idea if the plug came standard on all models or if you are wiring the switch up from scratch, either way, we can work out what needs to go where. Image

On my particular car, I'll tell you what wire colors I had but here's the schematic I used as a guide too. This was gotten from the USDM wiring diagrams manual at this link:http://www.aeu86.org/technical/ae86-manuals/
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After I had the plug I began testing the power wires to see if I was going to have to run power. Luckily, everything checked out. The Blue/Black wire, Pin 1, should show +12v when the ignition is on. If it doesn't, run a fused +12v IGN wire and connect it to the plug meaning cut the blue/black wire a few inches down from the plug and connect it to the plug side so it goes into the switch. Pin 2 should be a ground. I checked this by checking continuity with a multimeter to metal and it was good. Again, if you're wiring from scratch or don't get a good ground, cut the wire a few inches down and connect a ground to the plug side (Post any questions if you don't know how to make a ground). Once these wires check out or are connected you have Power. All that's left is connecting the mirror motors.

I started with the mirror's themselves. Your mirror should have 3 wires that go to a female plug. I'm going to assume that everyone has at least these plugs.
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If not, again just put up a post and I'll give you the wire colors I have on my mirrors. From there I was also given this extension for the door:
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It has a male end that connects to the mirror's female plug and then a female end on the other end that is identical to the end coming out of the mirror. There are three colors when looking at this female end from left to right, pins on bottom:
Pin 1-Red/Green
Pin 2-Red/Blue
Pin 3-Red
This extension puts the plug in an easy spot to disconnect at the bottom of the door in case I ever needed to pull the door.
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So now in both doors I have these plugs at the bottom of the door and I'm ready to run some wires. Again, since I had some extra parts, I used 2 more female plugs that these could plug into and I'll be soldering my wires to them so that it's an easy plug and play type ordeal (You can see the plug in the picture above). I started with the passenger side mirror first. Using 18 gauge wire, I measured 3 wires to go from the plug to the passenger door with a little extra on each end to allow for twisting and running with factory wire. I didn't take any pictures of this but I'd say the passenger side was between 3-4 feet long and the driver was only about 2 feet long. After I had the wires cut even to length, I tied them to something stationary. I used my dash that was out of the car at the time but you can use a screw or pole, really anything.
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I then put the ends on the other side into my drill and tightened down on them with the chuck. Once in the drill, keeping the wires taught with whatever you have them tied to, I slowly began winding them up. This gives the wires a nice look, makes them easy to run, and keeps them together. The finished product should look like this:
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You can look up on youtube 'how to twist wires with a drill' if you don't get what I'm saying here. You can see I used 3 separate colors for this: Red, Black, and White. You can use whatever you have obviously just make sure you keep track of what's connected to what. From here I soldered on the male plug that was going into the door to plug into the extension. I chose to run the wire colors like this:
Red-Red (Pin 3)
Black-Red/Blue (Pin 2)
White-Red/Green (Pin 1)
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You can use heat shrink or tape to cover these connections, I use heat shrink excessively just because I think it looks cleaner so I used 1/8" shrink on each of these then used 1/4" heat shrink to bundle them together. This is the finished look of the plug to wire connections:
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Repeat this process for the Driver side as well.
From there I just had to run the wires through the door jams up with the factory wiring to the mirror switch. I had the dash off already so getting it ran clean was a breeze:
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So now you should have 6 wires ran to the plug and you just need to connect them to the factory switch. For these connections I cut the wires and then connected them to the switch side with solder and then used heat shrink to cover it. So as not to confuse anyone with wire colors, I'm only going to use the factory plugs wire colors to describe what connects where. Take both Mirror sides Red/Blue(Pin 2) wires and connect them to the Brown/Red(Pin 3) wire off of the switch:
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Next for the passenger side, connect the Red wire(Pin 3) to the Red wire(Pin 5) on the switch plug and the Red/Green wire(Pin 1) to the Red/Green wire(Pin 4) on the switch:
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For the Driver side, Connect the Red wire(Pin 3) from the mirror to the Blue wire(Pin 6) at the switch. Connect the Red/Green wire(Pin 1) to the Light Green wire(Pin 7) at the switch:
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Everything is now connected and you can test it. Turn the car on and make sure it all works. Because I'm picky, I pulled the pins out of the switch plug and through on another layer of heat shrink to keep the bundle together:
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You can use tape too if you don't dig heat shrink. I then put the pins back in and cleaned up the harness with some fresh tape:
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One less headache to worry about! If there's anything unclear to you in this write up of you have questions, just ask. Hope this helps everyone!