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Installing an Auto-Dimming Mirror

by: William Ford

Posted on: Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 8:39 pm by: William Ford
Comments (2)

Staring directly into H.I.D headlamps is something we here at HotCars don’t recommend, which is why the nifty aftermarket auto dimming mirrors that have started to flood the market have us excited. Auto-dimming mirrors or electro chromic (EC) mirrors significantly reduce glare from the headlamps of following traffic. Over the past decade the popularity of these mirrors has skyrocketed making them standard equipment in many new cars (or at least an option in many packages). EC mirrors utilize a gel, pressed between two glass planes, which darken when stimulated by a slight electrical charge.

The benefits of reducing the headache inducing dual suns in your review are many, the trade off being the high cost of purchase and installation. For the low-end models you can get away with spending around $100 but if you want something that will last you, and earn its keep in reliable performance, expect to pay up to a grand. Ouch. But at the end of the day (and into the night) an investment that will save your eyes from unnecessary strain is a worthwhile one.

So here’s our suggestion; install it yourself. If you can install a car stereo you’ll have no problem throwing an EC mirror in your ride, and skipping the exaggerated shop labor costs.
Most of your installation time will be spent removing the upper ceiling console and figuring our which wires connects where.

Start by removing your old mirror, this will require grabbing the plastic cover and giving it a slight twist to pull her off.

Once you remove the cover press the clip on the bottom where it connects to the glass and slide it up. Put the new mirror onto the glass button and tighten to your specific mirror’s instructions.

Now comes the hard part, take off the ceiling panel of your car and remove the 12 pin connector from the console. Then unplug the 10 pin connector from the sunroof controller if you have one.

Next run your mirror wires through the console using connectors supplied with the new mirror. Connect the constant to the big blue wire, the ACC to the small blue wire and the ground to the big white wire.

Wrap up the wires neatly and reconnect the sunroof controller.

Follow the programming instructions that came with the mirror to the T, and you should be enjoying the serenity of EC assisted night driving in no time at all.

2 Comments

June 6th, 2008 by ViggySmalls

I have heard that auto dimming mirrors can affect the performance of my radar detector. I think that Mercedes has fixed this problem, but I would worry that for those of us that dont have a mercedes and like to mount our detectors over the mirror, we may jepordize the performance of the detector