Tuesday, November 12, 2013

JDM power folding mirrors in July 2012

Power folding mirrors were standard equipment of Type-Rx models, as usually sold only in Japan.
Because the door of my garage is very narrow it is very difficult to back up with the mirrors folded in normal position. Having to manually fold them every time I go back home was simply too annoying. The moment I found out about the JDM folding mirrors I knew that they would by my next project.
Installing the JDM mirrors is not easy task to do because the necessary wiring is not presented in the car. I purchased the mirrors, switch box and control relay box with connectors on HK EBay as one unit for 140USD. 

JDM folding mirrors with relay box
and switch box.
Because the color did not match I decided to swap the JDM internals into my championship white painted EUDM covers. Later on I discovered that the base where the 3 bolts hold the mirror did not fit into my EUDM cover, but shaving of a material did the trick.
Before installing the internals I disassembled them, cleaned everything thoroughly, lubricated the cogs, and replaced the DC motors with new one from EBay (Mabuchi FC-280PC-22125).

Overhauled internals with new DC motor.

You can see in the picture that the mirror has 5 wires, 3 of them are for mirror adjustment, 2 are for feeding the power to the DC motor, which generates the folding movement. Those 2 additional wires have to be added on each side of the car.
The assembly of the internal mechanism can be seen in the following pictures.

Internal mechanism with dust cover fitted.
Back cover with internal mechanism fitted.
Top cover fitted.
The back side of mirror.
The mirror is press fitted on a joint.

The relay box of the folding mirrors should be installed into the driver's door. The power and ground for both folding mechanism motors can be then easily fed from the window power source. There is a lot of space in the door. I installed the relay box (the box with blue connector) inside the door as seen in this picture.

Installed relay box.

The wiring diagram looks like this.>

Wiring diagram.

You can see in the diagram that the mirrors share two additional wires A and B. These wires are not available in the car, you have to add them, or like in my case, you can reuse the speakers wires, because they go all the way through the car, through the door connector into the door. This option disables your front speakers, but in my case I had upgraded the speaker wires in 2010 and the old speakers wires were not used any longer. So I just traced the wires FL+- FR+- underneath the centre console and soldered them together.
Modifying the wiring inside the driver's door is not that complicated, you just patch in the blue connector of relay box to the stock green one and add two power wires.

The blue connector patched in.
Finished wiring inside the driver's door.
Two additional power wires for
passenger side mirror.

Job finished! The mirrors work very well. Though I noticed that the folding angle is not the same for both sides. The passenger side mirror can go a little bit further inside than the driver's mirror. There is nothing wrong with it, it is built purposely to do that.
Another observation, if you shut the engine and start it again, the folding mirror control relay resets itself. In this case when you want to fold the mirrors inwards, it is necessary to double push to control switch, otherwise folding in or out the mirrors requires only a single push of the button.

This video shows how the mirrors work (skip to 1min 15sec mark):

14 comments:

  1. HOW IS THE VIEW ON THEM I TO INSTALED THEM ON MY USDM INTEGRA AND THE VIEW SEEMS TO BE ODD (BACKWARDS) DO YOU HAVE SAME PROBLEM OR DID YOU FIND A SOLUTION ?

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    1. I haven't noticed any changes in the mirrors geometry, I use them regularly when backing up the car and don't have any issues with them. It's probably because I have just swapped the JDM folding mechanism into my EUDM mirror cover and kept the EUDM mirros as well.

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    2. OH SO I HALF TO SWAP IN THE INTERNALS INTO MY USDM MIRROR HOUSING THEN? I JUST LEFT THE JDM ONES I THINK THE BASE THE ONE THAT MOUNTS TO THE CAR IS WHAT IS COUSING MIRRORS TO BE SLIGHTLY OFF THANKS FOR REPLY DO YOU HAVE A INSTAGRAM?

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    3. There's a problem with the swapping of the internals though, You have to shave some material from the USDM housing (I assume it's the same shape as EUDM), the JDM internals don't exactly match the shape of the base where the 3 bolts fix the mirror, I was able to correct the shape of the base on the housing with a hobby drill. I did this because the JDM housing had different paint on it and I didn't want to spend money on repaint. So in your case maybe swapping just the inner mirrors will correct the problem, I suppose the swapping of the housing won't be necessary.

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    4. I have to correct myself, I checked the mirror in the garage and some pictures and It's the base, which mounts to the car, that has to be modified. If you use the USDM base, the slot where the whole mirror assembly is fixed has a slightly different shape that can be corrected with a hobby drill. So on second thought, it's probably the base itself that causes the viewing problems as you've already mentioned. In my case, the mirror, housing and the base is EUDM, only the internal mechanism is JDM.
      I don't have Instagram.

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    5. OK THANKS I WILL TRY SWAPPING THE HOUSING THANKS WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED GREATE BLOG BY THE WAY IF YOU EVER MAKE A INSTAGRAM IM @95LSVBOY

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  2. HALO WHAT DID YOU SHAVE TO MAKE FIT??

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    Replies
    1. I had to remove some inside material of the EUDM plastic cover base with a hobby drill to make the JDM metal part fit into it. Nothing complicated just a little hiccup in the transplantation process. I don't have any pictures of it though.

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  3. OK THANK YOU I WILL GIVE IT A TRY JUST PURCHASED SOME LHD MIRRORS ARE YOU ON ANY OF THE FORUMS SO I CAN DIRECT MESSAGE FOR ANY QUESTIONS?

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    Replies
    1. For direct messaging use the ITR#1920 Blog Contact Form, located on the page in the right column.

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  4. wanted to let you know I swapped in the passenger side mirror didn't need to shave cut any thing I will be doing driver side this week all I did was de pin so can remove wires and re pin to lhd mirror now my question what wires did you use to run the travel to make them fold thanks

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    Replies
    1. I re-used oem speaker wires to feed the power to passenger side folding mirror from the relay box which I installed into driver's door, it's mentioned in the post anyway.

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  5. CAN YOU DO A WRITE UP OR SHOW HOW THE OEM REAR FOG LIGHT GOES HOOKED UPI?

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    Replies
    1. I've never tinkered with the rear fog light as this is factory stuff, there was no need for me to do anything with it. Try google, I suppose there are some write up's already posted.

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