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Manual to electric/heated door mirrors possible?

14K views 54 replies 6 participants last post by  steviejones133 
#1 ·
I'm wondering, as I have a 2001 Y reg MY2000 MGF 1.6, wether it is possible to convert the manual mirrors to electric/heated without too much fuss? - I'm in the process of converting the non-colour coded exterior bits (side vents, mirrors and handles) to colour coded - if possible. I salvaged a pair of matched side vents but am still looking for mirrors/handles and wondered about the thread title - I guess if it is a paint in the butt to do, I could look at rattle cans and respraying but the idea of the motorised mirrors appeals a bit more and I've spotted some that look okay......

Seen a few threads, but none conclusive enough to make me jump on buying some yet. I was hoping that someone could comment on wether it's possible and if so, wether it's easy or complex.

Here's what I can tell you - my F has a blank where the switch for the electric windows should go on the cowl. Without looking, I don't know if there is any wiring behind the cowl, but I'm sure I saw a connector block in the door space when I was adjusting the window positioning can anyone comment on the wiring and if it is already present?

Could anyone shed any light on this for me - also, if at all possible, are the mirrors 'sided' or can one put a RH mirror on the LH and have it work the same?

Thanks in advance chaps.
Steve :smile:
 
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#2 ·
The blank on the cowl is for the mirror switch, not the windows.
I thought even the 115 had electric windows.

First step is to check out for the wiring behind the blank.
(I managed to fit electric mirrors on my mk1 F that didn't have the wiring)

They are handed but it is possible to adjust them with the correct tool, there was a discussion somewhere on the subject but I can't remember if it was here, on the register or the t-bar.com.
 
#3 ·
Thanks mate - my typo, I meant to say mirror blank and not window!

I've got leccy windows hence my thinking that the wiring might already be there.....that and I am sure I saw a unconnected plug hanging in the door cavity when adjusting my windows for correct hard top/soft top alignment. I guess I'll dismantle the door again to check and same for the cowl to see if the plug for the mirror switch is hanging about somewhere.........

I'td be good if I could buy two RH mirrors and use them on either side - someone on eBay selling brand new RH ones in my colour so it would work out fantastic if I could.......
 
#4 ·
the wiring may be behind the dash but with the price cutting after 2000 they cut down fitting a standard wiring loom threw the rest of car ie door wiring / under carpet wiring ( mainly anything that was connected to the main dash wiring ),
so it may not be in the doors or connected to the fuse box and relays (they usually didn't put the relays in as well ) , so unless they ran out and had no choice and fitted the full wiring it wont be their , had 2 1999 400s the first had all the wiring and relays for everything the second had none of the extras wiring fitting so it depends when in the run they started with the cost cutting, but good luck and hope its all their ,will save some time and money if it is.
 
#6 ·
Okay, some progress made Today..some good, some not so good:

I removed the door card, drivers wing mirror and instrument cowl etc to search for wires/connectors.

I could not immediately spot a cable with a connector on it to fit into the back of an electric mirror control switch that goes near the brightness adjuster for the instruments - it could be tucked away I'm hoping, but I've had a good look and could not spot anything :frown:

Good news - stripped the door down and wing mirror and the wing mirror has two blue wires going into the mirror housing:



There is a connector that these wires lead to that is attached to the door housing - the top one in this pic....not sure what the other one is for.....



There is also a 10a fuse present in the space for the electric mirrors



I'm presuming that the wires present are for heated mirrors (which I did not think my base 1.6 F would have anyway, but could still be wrong) but am still at a loss as to wether I could potentially upgrade them to full electric adjustable mirrors................
 
#7 · (Edited)
Your base MGF 1.6 will not have manual but heated mirrors. Mirrors of the MGF/TF are actualy the same as for Rover 200 mk3 'bubble'. These mirrors are either manual and nothing else or electric and heated.

As you can see on the picture above both wires are blue, meaning of the same colour.

This could be a DIY job, but with proper connector. DIY jobs are usualy done with same wire colour because it is easier to buy one colour of the wire and do all with it.

Since you separated your problems in two threads with odd electrical problems you have now, I will continue to post in that other thred.

However, two yellow wires of same colours not attached to anything (again of same colour) might well be interior part of DIY job for heated mirrors, but most probably unfinished.

Regarding second connector it looks like factory fitted with correct wires. You could trace other side in order to see where these wires end in the door, I imagine they could be central locking, but in that case wiring colours are little different then expected.

Just to add that I also added electrical mirrors on my wife's R200 mk3 and complete wiring below the dash including wiring in the doors had to be implemented. Parts from donor car were used because of connectors.

EDIT: Again I cheked the wiring and wired coming to this second connector - grey/blue and grey/white correspond to RH side electric door window motor. I assume that the wires on the other side of this connector (red and blue/red) goes to electric motor itself.

EDIT2: Seems that I stand corrected and that you have factory fitted manual heated door mirrors (see http://forums.mg-rover.org/8443105-post13.html). I also learned today something I obviously was not aware of in regard to MGF door mirrors.

EDIT3: Fuse for heating mirror elements is the same one for electric mirrors number 18 of 10 amps.
 
#8 ·
I guess if it is a paint in the butt to do, I could look at rattle cans and respraying
I admire your determination... Thats probably above and beyond though :smile:
 
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#9 ·
I was oddly surprised that my base model indeed has factory manual heated mirrors fitted, shocked in fact!

Still, from looking at my looms etc, I don't appear to have any of the multiple wires required to go full electric movement, which is a shame. I've read a few posts that suggest it is possible via DIY loom making, but I ain't got a clue where to start on that one - any suggestions?

Oh, and as for painting 'em, kind of a last resort - at least now I know that I can go manual heated without having to do anything other than a straight swap for colour coded ones.

I guess the mirror switch which I acquired is going to be as much use as a chocolate fireguard........
 
#10 · (Edited)
As I said in above post DIY job of creating loom for electric mirrors is possible.

Electric mirrors have 6 wires and larger plug on them.
Mirror switch have 7 wires and 7 pin plug on it. Easier way would be to go to scrapyard and source mentioned plugs as well as door loom which goes throgh rubber inside the car for both doors.

Diagram for electric door mirrors can be found I think even online.

EDIT: Quick search on google provided this link with exact diqgram (it is for the TF but it is the same for F): http://www.mgfcar.de/schedules/140_spiegel.jpg
 
#11 ·
I'll have to have a look at my local scrapie to see if I can find a heap with leccy mirrors!!

Meanwhile, as my thoughts of instant electric mirror gratification goes out the window at the mo, I turned my attention to see what those two mysterious 'yellow' wires are, and actually, tracing them back where the eye could see, it turns out they are purple. I can only think that the bits which I saw that were yellow are maybe a crimp of some kind.

Anyway, here's a couple of pics showing where those wires lead to - dunno if anyone can comment as to what they may be for?





 
#13 · (Edited)
They both looked solid purple - I couldn't see any stripe on either wire. Actually, I don't think the circle around my ignition lights up or if it even has the capability to do so - I think I did see a purple wire going to it when I had the steering wheel column cover removed. Possibly could be that as the unterminated end that I thought I had disturbed was in the vicinity of the ignition barrel.....

Do all F's/TF's have an illuminated circle around the ignition barrel??

Come to think of it, neither does the ring around the cigar lighter work...should that work also? - perhaps one wire is for each of those?

EDIT: found this http://fregister.proboards.com/thread/3429/illuminated-ignition-key-slot that seems to point to the fact that the ring around my ignition should be lit......hmmmmmm
 
#14 ·
Just a quick question/update.......

Been to my local scrappie Today and spent an hour or so trying to wrangle the wiring required for the electric mirrors out - tough job!!!. I managed fairly easily to get the wiring out of both doors but soon came across the massive struggle of trying to separate the wires I required from the rest of the loom. Of course, they are all taped up and secured behind the dash to such a degree that even with my tiny girlie hands, struggle as I did, I just could not free the rest of the loom up enough to get what I needed, what with it being all strapped to the bulk head right out of reach.....

At this point, it started to rain (on a roofless MG in a scrap yard, not so good) and rain kinda stopped play......and my bleeding knuckles and soggy butt (from sitting on already soaked through seats) had really had enough for one day.

I came home feeling slightly defeated - it was all going well at one point and then hit the brick wall. I've since Googled about for 'round two with the scrap car from hell' and I don't know if there is an easier way, but for me to get to the complete loom and make it far easier to get the required wiring, it's come to light that I've gotta take the dash out of the sodding thing..........yep, its still there in all its 'pain in the butt' glory....

So, is there a 'how to' for removing the dash or can anyone suggest an easier way to get at the complete section of wires that I require?

At this point, I'm half thinking of chucking in the towel, but the other half of me wants to rip the guts out of this wreck and accomplish my mission......should I choose to accept it.

Thoughts welcomed
 
#15 ·
The usual way is to take the loom from the door, but as you see you cannot get the complete wiring under the dash without the huge job.
In that case you just take the switch and the rest of connectors is cut out from the loom with pigtail of wires still attached in order to be easy to solder new wires in and complete the loom in your car.
 
#16 ·
Of course electric door mirrors are a nice feature, but its not like you adjust them every day is it?
 
#17 ·
From my experoance they are very handy when you are making side parking or when you have obstacle you cannot see from the side when you are reversing. I have them on my R600 and since R200 came without them I needed to retro-fit them.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Well, spent a few hours in the scrapyard again Today - found a donor car (W reg F that had leccy mirrors) and set about dash removal. All in all, went fairly well - had the dash out in about 45 mins. Small hands are great! :grin:

Then came the longer job of sorting through the main loom and separating the mirror loom from the rest of the guff - of course, all taped and tied together. I did my best not to snip away like a lunatic as forethought for other people wanting stuff sprang to mind. Anyway, a few hours later I ended up with what I wanted - or at least what I thought was required. I encountered a 'schoolboy error' on the RHS plug - I snipped more or less all the wires to get it through to rubber grommet between the door and body - I realised on the LHS that it was far easier to snip through the grommet and just pull the wires and plug through complete without having to cut it off....still, I think it worked out quite well, given I am a novice really.

Came home and did a temporary assembly of the mirror loom and it looks like this - excuse the temporary choc bloc assembly, I just wanted to get it right in my own mind before solder/heatshrink to properly terminate:



Black arrows - 3 all together, one from each side and one from the switch - earth I presume that I need to extend and join together to down by the fusebox inside the car where there is an earth point - right?

Green arrows - power, I am assuming. One from each side and one from the switch which are now all joined up together in a choc bloc, temporarily - 2nd pic below, bloc on the right - wires to the left side of the bloc are from switch/LHS joined up to green from RHS mirror .I had to cut from a header tucked behind the speedo to the left to get the wires out. I didn't fancy ripping my own dash out to try and join to the existing header. I'm presuming I now need to find a place to get power from other than my existing header. See pic below:



Grey/White - again, snippy snippy - Again, I have joined them all up together (x2 from LHS, x2 from RHS and x1 from switch) as it seems like that's how its meant to be, or at least that's how I seem to recall when I was taking it out.



The rest of the wires are just joined up together according to their colour/stripe from each side to the switch.....I knew that bit!

So, all I need to do now is figure out how to install it (presuming the above wiring is okay) and get it working. Right now, my existing 'heated mirror only' wiring is still in place. Question is, to get a fuse in line, how am I best to wire it in?

Do I leave the existing wiring in place and just add the new loom in? - do I use the existing loom for power/earth and if so, how? - I guess this is the part where I've done all the hard work and just need advice as to how best to go about getting the new loom installed, such as where to get power from and fused, so advice and such would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
#19 ·
From what you described everything seems good connected. Look at diagram I posted link from above.

If you want to test the wiring, as you have new mirrors out of car, connect them and you need to use car battery, join all black wires together and connect them to (minus) terminal on car battery, while green wire you need to connect to (plus) terminal of car battery, and you can test the mirrors with the switch.

Further, I would take existing wiring out of the doors and put new in. However, since this might be problem if existing wires are taped together with central locking you might want to leave it in car. But in that case tape it firmly, not to dangle along as you are driving as that will drive you mad.

Further more, since these wires from heated mirrors are coming from the same fuse and earth where electric mirrors should come, you can just splice new wires to them. Light green is power (fused where it should be) and black is earth. You can do that in the doors for the mirrors and in the car for the switch. I think that you have enough wire in donor wiring loom for spliceing in the door loom.
 
#20 ·
Thanks for the confirmation, I had looked at that schematic after posting and indeed it does look fine. Also, I had forgotten that the existing supply to the manual heated mirrors came from green/black wiring (2nd pic from top of thread I posted) so indeed it should be quite simple to cut off the existing plug and use the existing black/green to 'tap in' at those precise points and maintain the fusing of the current circuit for mirrors/windows. I'm assuming that I have sufficient length in both sides to simply feed each side through the dash and doors and have the switch installed as well - I made sure that I took as much length from the donor car as possible.

Regarding that fuse, it's currently a 10a - is there any need to change that or is 10a sufficient to cope with the addition of motorised & heated mirrors? (I'm assuming that all motorised mirrors are also heated.....looks like they are according to the schematic.

Also, good idea to test out before installing - I hand't thought of doing that. Is there any danger in doing so without a fuse connected?
 
#21 ·
...

Regarding that fuse, it's currently a 10a - is there any need to change that or is 10a sufficient to cope with the addition of motorised & heated mirrors? (I'm assuming that all motorised mirrors are also heated.....looks like they are according to the schematic.

Also, good idea to test out before installing - I hand't thought of doing that. Is there any danger in doing so without a fuse connected?
Present fuse of 10 amps on position nuber 18 is the correct fuse for heated electric mirrors. Most of the power is used for heaters, while mirrors motors use much less power. You do not need to change the fuse for greater value.

If you have spare battery for the test purpose on the bench you should be fine. Without a fuse the worse situation you could get are melted wires if you produce short circuit somewhere, but that should not happen if you are doing sensible test where you will monitor all what is happening and you can remove terminal from the battery as soon as you see something odd is happening.

Test on the car battery while the battery is in the car, connected is something I would strongly recommend not to do.
 
#22 ·
Thanks for that, mate.

One or two more questions:

1. If I bought a pair of motorised mirrors that are the same side (eg. two RHS mirrors), can I invert or adjust the wiring of the incorrectly sided one so that the motor works the correct way when adjusted? - the reason for asking is that there is a seller on eBay who has x2 brand new ones in my colour but they are both RHS. Also, is there any mounting issues with using a wrong sided mirror, other than the motor operation?

2. Manual heated mirrors (the ones I have now) - is it possible to mount/fit just the internals of an electric motorised mirror into a manual casing? - just thinking about sourcing the casing and workings separately - mainly for cost reasons.

Thanks for all the adivce thus far - it's been brilliant!!
 
#23 · (Edited)
For the motor, if you invert wires for the motors in the mirror on the connector you picked on scrapyard, in accordance to picture I posted link to, you should be able to invert 'wrong' RH side mirror to LHS one with motor working correctly in accordance to switch movement.

First of all I did not try to swap electric MGF/TF mirrors and use RHS on LHS, so I do not know answer from experiance. But judging from what I see these mirrors do look identical and in case of manual mirrors I do not see difference between RHS and LHS even same part number is used for both sides.
Although there are different part numbers for electrical windows for RHS and LHS I assume there should not be mounting points differences. However you might find that RHS mirror on LH side do not go as far in one direction as LHS might, so might have limitations with mirror position when you swap them. This is my assumption.

For swaping the internals I honestly do not know, because I did not have a need to open manual one and compare it with electric one. What might be the problem is that plastic moulded mounting points which you might need in case of electric mirror motor and you do not have them moulded in case of manual mirror casing. Personally I would not go into this direction as I expect problems described.

I did made conversions on R600 mirrors from RHD to LHD ones, but these mirrors are sided and you cannot swap RHS for LHS one.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Thanks again for the info.

I've been searching around the web and I've managed to find a business that is selling old and unused stock of MG wing mirrors - he's got my colour (JRJ Tahiti Blue) in stock and although he said to me on the phone that they have some minor blemishes, they look pretty damn good to me - and the price is right instead of stupid £100 per mirror for new elsewhere. I noticed from the pic below that the wing mirror wiring is not the same colours as the loom, but I'm guessing that really doesn't matter - as long as the plug terminals are correct, functionality should not be an issue.

The good thing is that they are also the correct handling on each side, or so I've been told. the part numbers quoted to me were:

CRB110200JRJ - Flat mirror
CRB110180JRJ - Convex mirror

I've been Googling the part numbers and came across something interesting. The top part number has a flat mirror as opposed to convex and is, from my understanding, meant for the Australian drivers. The part number CRB110160(XXX - Colour code) relates to a convex, non-Australian market. I don't now if that has a major impact for using in the UK.....I never thought that wing mirrors were such a minefield!!!!

Source: http://www.mgfregister.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4833 & http://www.v8register.net/FilesRV8WN/RV8NOTE377-RV8-electric-wing-mirrors-JTS5-130422.pdf

Here's a pic of them:

 
#25 · (Edited)
Wire colours on the mirror do not need to correspond to loom wire colours, so you will be just fine if the plug is the same as the one on your loom, as you said.

Regarding part numbers, yes, they are correct for RHS and LHS. Your LH side is exactly what you need. RHS is with flat mirror. As far as I know there is no particular law saying you must have convex mirror, so you are perfectly good with flat mirror.
You need to remember that convex mirrors present objects smaller then they are and more distant from you then in reality. At present you have convex mirrors while your rear view mirror on windscreen is flat. Take a look and you will see the difference. When I am looking into cars behined me on motorway and calculating how fast they go and how close they are to me I need to look in rear view mirror in order to be certain, as side mirrors are leading me into confusion.
So from my point of view flat RHS mirror can make you more good.

Hovewer if you are not satisfied, you can change mirror to convex one later on (I think even you can take convex mirror from your manual one).

I do not know what are the prices you are offered, but Rimmers is selling AU one you are offered for something more then £50.

EDIT: Also I see correct RHS mirror on ebay, completely new for under £40 and they have two of them: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-M...hash=item4846305190:m:mK47KRzwSoEPgdkDwyp1PFg.
I assume that is the one you were looking at previously. So buy CRB110160JRJ one from eBay and CRB110180JRJ one from above picture and you are happy guy?
 
#26 ·
Funny you should post that link up as those were the mirrors I was considering buying two of (his last two) but obviously, both were the same RHS (CBR110160xxx). I spoke to Rimmers this morning who confirmed that the correct LHS number is indeed CRB110180xxx and not CRB110200xxx which is for Australia and has a flat mirror, not convex.

Not that the mirrors would be such a huge issue, but I wanted the correct ones, ideally.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I spoke to the guys selling the eBay ones - the one you linked to was brand new & boxed but he has others on a different listing which he describes as scratched and/or requiring respraying.

I managed to cut a deal on a pair of 'correct' colour coded JRJ leccy mirrors for £55 delivered for them both. Not bad considering one is brand new and the other he 'cherry picked' for me was just as good condition he said. Compared to Rimmers who wanted (for a pair in primer only) £149.98 +VAT & Shipping. Also noticed that the eBay seller has put the last new one up to £48.95 now......

Well happy with that!! - on a side note, to complete the colour coding, I've sourced a passenger door handle in good condition, just need to find a drivers one now.......
 
#27 · (Edited)
That is a good deal. Let me know when you finish if everything works fine, or ask if there are more questions in the meantime.

Door handle you are looking for would then be CXB101740JRJ.
 
#28 ·
Thanks. I'll post up when I've had the bits with some pics and as and when I get them installed/tested. Oh, and thanks for the handle part number - doesn't look like I'll get a new one of those....actually been struggling to find one via eBay that is in reasonable condition.

The hunt continues.........
 
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