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H3 Heated mirrors conversion

JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Now for the splice. Using your wire strippers (you do have a good pair that has individually sized spots for different wire gauges, right? if not get a pair, they are better than the all in one crap crimper/strippers or the "adjustable" strippers) cut the insulation at two points about a half inch apart, then use your knife to cut off the insulation at that point.

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Here is the barrel crimp I cut in half and spread apart to slip over the wire.

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Slip the crimp over the wire and then close it up and then slip the new ground wire for the mats in and crimp it down.

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Apply liquid tape and slip heatshrink over it and shrink it down, then plug the terminal back into the right spot in the connector and wrap it back up. Slip some more heatshrink over the new ground wire and crimp on a insulated spade connector and apply liquid tape and shrink the heat shrink on.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Ok, now for the power wire.

Feed in the wire (I used yellow because different) through the grommet and pass it up through one of the holes that you access the mirror bolt through. Make sure to route it away from the window track. Pull up more than you need so that you can wrap friction tape over it and then pull it back through so that the section of wire inside the door is fully wrapped with friction tape. slide heatshrink over the wire, crimp on the spade connector, apply liquid tape, shrink the heatshrink.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Next is the Deutsch connector. I won't include instructions on how to put these together as there are Youtube videos on how to do it. That's also a whole writeup in and of itself, and this is already taking a long time to write up for y'all.

So, wire up the Deutsch connector (make sure to use the male end on the door, the female end will be in the fender, this is proper procedure to have the side that has power always applied to it be the female side to avoid accidental shorts when the connector is unplugged), fill in the extra hole with something (they make plugs specifically for this, but I didn't have time to wait for any so I used some plastic toothpicks cut up instead), apply liquid tape at the grommet (it's a good fit as is, but I wanted to be sure), then cut some split loom to put over the wire as protection. Honestly I should have taped up the ends of the split loom with friction tape to keep the wire from coming out of the loom, but it was dark by this point and I was just trying to get the bloody thing done.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Now for the power wires inside the engine bay.

There is a hole in the body that grants access from inside the fenders to inside the engine bay on both sides. It's in the same spot on each side too, so that's nice. The drivers side is easy to get to, but on the passenger side you'll want to unbolt the washer fluid/coolant reservoir tanks to get easier access to it, unless you have ridiculously small hands/wrists/arms. There are two 10 mm bolts along the fender and a single 13 mm bolt at the back of the coolant side down at the bottom. Just pull it away to gain some room, you don't need to unhook any of the hoses or anything like that. The holes are a few inches or so from the firewall.

This is looking inside the fender from where the door was.

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Tanks unbolted and pulled out.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Prep your wire by putting it inside the split wire loom first, then pass it from inside the engine bay through the holes out into the fenders. You'll probably want to use a wire coat hanger that has been taken apart to fish them from inside the fenders. When I ran the wires I started on the driver's side and didn't cut the split loom or the wire from the spool until after I had passed the wire/loom out into the fender, then judged how much I needed to reach the fuse box. With the loom I actually waited until I knew exactly how much I needed when I went to actually wire it into the fuse box, the wire I went ahead and cut. (I'm more likely to use short bits of wire than short bits of split loom). I used my second roll of split loom on the passenger side and left the wire uncut from the spool.

So once you have the wire and loom out into the fenders, go ahead and install the female Deutsch connectors. Make sure that you install the pins on the same side of the male and female connectors. I used position 1 (they are marked on the housings). Now you're ready to go ahead and put the doors back on. Again, it will help to have a friend help you put them back on, it's near impossible to see the door pins to line them up by yourself. Bolt the hings and the swing restraint back on, then hook up the new heated mirror connector and the door wiring harness connector.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Ok, now that the door is back on it's time to bolt the mirror back on and finish hooking it up. Remember to roll the window back down if you rolled it up.

When re-mounting the mirror, make sure to route the wires a safe way around the window track, and route them back out the large access hole.. Reinstalling the wiring grommet can be a bit of a pain as you don't get a lot of slack between it and the mirror arm. Make sure it's pushed all the way back in, then slide the mirror pins in and then bolt it up. Make sure to re-attach the plastic clip for the motor wiring harness.

Hook everything up and cover it back up with the foam insulation panel. Before you go to put the door trim panel back on you'll likey need to fix the top clip on nut thing that the bolt for the door handle screws into. They seem to like to flatten out and then not stay in place afterwards. So you'll need to take it off the door, then use a flathead screwdriver to pry the thin part that is supposed to hold it in place in the hole out so that when you put it back on the sheet metal it will stay in place. It's pretty impossible to realign it after the door trim is on.

Re-mount the door trim panel by first hooking it at the top to the channel along the window, and then lining up the clips at the top outer side (start with the one at the outer door edge top and the rest should line right up) and pop it all back in place. Screw in the three Torx bolts you removed earlier and put the bolt covers back on, then plug back in the door switch panel and snap it back into place.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Allright, on to finishing up the wiring for our awesome new mirror heaters.

Move in to the engine bay, unhook the battery terminals (always start with the negative terminal), remove the fuse box cover, use a 1- mm socket to remove the nuts holding on the positive leads to the 125 Amp fuse, unhook the connector with the purple and red wires, use a flathead screwdriver to pry up the black plastic surround on the large multipin connector and pull it all the way up until the connector is released and comes out.

Move those out of the way and then press in the four latches on the fuse box (two on each end) that are holding it in place and pull it all the way off.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Next you'll want to pull up on the two large connectors until they click into place so that when you go to reassemble it they will hook into the fuse center properly. Then you'll need to unhook the front white connector from the base, there are three tabs holding it in place, two on the right and one on the left. The two on the right are pretty easy to get to, but I had to use a flathead screwdriver to unlatch the one on the left. Pull it up and then unlatch the bottom cover to expose the underside of the connector.

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Take a small precision screwdriver and push out the green latch that locks the terminals in place, it will only come out a 1/16" or so.

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Use your precision screwdriver to unlatch the terminal for the largest black wire (you can see it in first pic in the upper left of the connector) and pull it out so that we can do a proper splice into it.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
To keep everything neat I ran the wire/loom from the passenger side along the brake line that is along the firewall, attaching it using zip ties. Then when I got it over to the wire/loom for the driver side I cut the loom from the passenger side and pass both wires the rest of the way up to the fuse box. I used friction tape to create the joint between the looms.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Next I routed the wires to the fuse box, cutting the loom so that it ended a few inches inside, tucked it down under the main wiring harness (don't bother putting it on top as it just won't let the fuse box latch all the way down), and spliced it the same way I did the ground wires in the doors. Then I plugged the terminal back into the connector and put the cover back on the connector and snapped it back into place. Then I snapped the fuse panel back in, plugged in the connectors, bolted the power cables back onto the 125 Amp fuse, and put the cover on. Then I put the batter terminals back on and went ahead and gave it all a try. I don't have any other pics than this one because my phone's battery died for a second time due to taking so many pictures with the flash and my auto-upload turned on.

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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
And here is a video of them in action, you can see the snow melting on them (I had to put some on), it's especially apparent on the driver side where there is snow around the edge that isn't melting but the snow in the middle is.

[video=youtube_share;s7tkHjhsKwg]https://youtu.be/s7tkHjhsKwg[/video]
 

JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
They are wired into the circuit for the rear defroster (that's the large black wire I spliced into in the fuse box) so it's part of the defroster circuit. So the rear defroster and the heated mirrors all come on when you push the defroster button on the HVAC controls, and shut off together as normal for the rear defroster control.
 
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