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I've had a couple people ask about my M3 mirror power conversion, below is
what I remember from when I did it. I don't have pictures but I have to take
them off to get them painted again so maybe I can supply those for a web
page.
I am going to assume you have a set of M3 look alike mirrors, painted and
ready to go on the car, and a car that has stock powered mirrors, or a set
of donor mirrors and associated power controls. This is from my experience
on a Golf 3 but should work for any car with power mirrors with a little
tweaking.
Before I even got started on the power conversion I took a dremel and
blended all the joints and smoothed out the injection molding lines because
they were pretty obvious. I smoothed out the bases made them look a lot
nicer. On to the interesting part.
Start by taking the glass out of the M3 mirrors. You will need a small screw
driver to pop the mirror glass off. There are 4 small clips on the back
side of the mirror, one in each corner. Push the mirror all the way in one
direction and you will be able to see them. Once the glass is out, there
will be a couple screws holding in the manual adjustment mechanism, take
this out and set aside.
Next take the stock mirrors off the car. There are 3 screws holding them on
and one is blocked by the door panel. You will have to take out a couple of
screws in the upper corner of the panel and hold it back, or just take it
off. You will want to pull the wiring harness out with the mirror, don't cut
it! It will help if you take the foam noise damping material out of the door
and the mirrors will then come off with the harness. There would be more
info on this in a manual.
After the mirrors are off, take mirror glass off the stock mirrors the same
way as with the M3 mirrors. It's a little more difficult, but work carefully
and try not to break the motors. Once the mirror is off disconnect the wire
that goes to the heating element and you can set the glass aside.
Once the glass is off you will be able to see the motor and there will be 3
(?) screws holding it on. Take these out and disconnect the wires going to
the motor. There may be a couple more screws in there, I don't remember. It
was pretty obvious though. To remove the wiring harness in one piece you
will need to remove the plug that goes into the motor. Before taking the
plug off be sure to write down what wire goes where so you can re-assemble
it later. Use a small screwdriver to push back the locking clip in the
harness for each wire and pull it out. You will then be able to pull the
wiring harness out of the stock mirror assembly.
Once both sets of mirrors are disassembled, start by threading the wiring
harness through the M3 mirror. There was a nice channel that it goes through
and looks like it was designed for power. Depending on where the hole in the
base plate of the mirror is you may need to enlarge the hole so that the
wires will clear the sheet metal in the car. I had to enlarge the hole about
3/4" to one side for this. Test fit the mirrors to check for interference.
Once the wires are in you can put the electrical plug back on using your
diagram from earlier. To mount the motors so the mounting holes line up and
the mirrors clip on correctly you will probably have to swap the right motor
to the left side and the left to the right. Look at the tabs on the motor,
the mounting holes in the mirror, and how the glass clips onto the motor and
until it all lines up. They should only go on one way to have the glass in
the right position. You can then screw the motor onto the mirror.
Next, plug in the motor, take the mirrors to the car, connect to the car's
harness and check that they work. I found that since the motors had been
swapped and rotated that when you pressed down they went up and left they
went right. If this happens trace the wires from the motor to the plug and
you should be able to figure out which pair make the mirrors go up/down and
left/right. You can try switching the wires for that axis and the glass
should change directions. This is mostly trial and error. I never got mine
perfect, but figured, hey, at least they move so I was satisfied. You may be
able to get them perfect, if you do let me know. If you want to get fancy it
might be possible to make an adaptor plate to keep the motor in the same
orientation you might be able to make the mirrors move the correct way when
the button is pressed, I didn't have any scrap metal around when I did it.
Once they move in an acceptable fashion, you can attach the glass to the
motor, and finish by installing the sound deadening foam and screwing the
mirrors to the car. Put back all the screws in the door panels etc and you
now have power mirrors for the same price of non powered ones. The whole
process took about an hour and a half.
Peter J.
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