Lighted visor mirror

[Aussie Ford]

Lighted visor mirrors

Don’t you just hate it when your lighted mirrors quit working…… so you pop off one of the covers and replace the bulb and it still doesn’t work! Then you get a tester and find that power is not getting to the bulb, and when you test the bulb, it is good. It gets worse if you just installed it after you wired in the pig tail for it while you were doing the rear dome light….. dam !!!



So, just how does one fix something like this? In my inventory of stuff, I just happened to have a couple of sets of them (none of them work). One was one that someone else actually fixed but the way they took it apart, it could not be put back together…. I started with this one since it was already broken. After looking it over, I decided to poke around on the edge.That line that looks like a seam is the joint between the two halves. It is shaped similar to a clamshell held together by some studs on one side that snap into keepers on the other.



I managed to open it using a screwdriver to pry it apart. While that did work on the test one I learned to be more careful on the one I want to install, and used a mini prybar and large screwdriver. By prying on both sides of the pins they didn’t break and remained usable to reassemble it.

Once opened, I found that the power wire just inside was broken off at its connector. After testing my other visors wiring, the same wire was not working on all of them. Now there is a coincidence for you.



The connector is a blade type and the male side is the one the wire was broken off of. To repair it I just stripped a small bit of the wire and soldered it onto the connector blade. Then plugged it back in. Tested it, all worked well so I snapped it back together got it ready for installation.





I know this stuff never happens to you but if on that rare occasion it does, and it isn’t just a bad bulb, at least now you know what needs doing.



AF

 

[DuratecDave]

RE: " It gets worse if you just installed it after you wired in the pig tail for it while you were doing the rear dome light….. dam !!!"

Maybe I am not following -- when I did the rear Mystique dome, I ran constant and switched power from the front dome assembly. Its a 3 position switch, right -- door, on, and off. The lighted mirror gets constant power as its lid is switched, correct?

Good write-up and pics, much appreciated. I pried mine open several years ago to install a homelink garage door opener. Back when the homelink rear view mirrors were crazy expensive. Snapped the two halves back together and they've never tried to come back apart after years of use.

 

[Scorpion8]

Dang, I need one of those for my Contour now.....

 

[Aussie Ford]

RE: " It gets worse if you just installed it after you wired in the pig tail for it while you were doing the rear dome light….. dam !!!"

Maybe I am not following -- when I did the rear Mystique dome, I ran constant and switched power from the front dome assembly. Its a 3 position switch, right -- door, on, and off. The lighted mirror gets constant power as its lid is switched, correct?

There are several ways to power up the rear dome light you chose one of them.

“That is exactly how I was going to do mine, but with the moonroof one has to fish it around that so I started by removing the trim around the opening…. And the headliner was sorta stuck to the edge so to get a little extra flexibility I removed the visor and the weather seals on driver side doors. I had already removed the rear headliner retainers to check the location of the hole….. next came removal of the rear grab handle, and why not the center pillar cover (just one screw) and that just left the rear pillar trim to pop loose since I already had the A pillar trim off due to another project….. With everything loose now why not install the clips like the factory does and well….. It all took about an hour.”

For the visor I powered it off of the orange always hot and the ground for the rear dome. Then I made up the wires on the "A" pillar under the cover. So in effect we both used the same wires just picked them up in a different spot.





AF