[pizzachef]

I started this endeavor at least a year ago, and have been planning on it for some time before that. My biggest hurdle was finding mirror glass that wasn’t already adhered to the black plastic frame with the black goop. Once I found that, I was on the way.

This mod isn’t, however, for the feint of heart. You need to REALLY want heated mirrors to go through this. Its not really complicated, but it involved much more work than I had initially anticipated. My main feeling at the completion of this is, I REALLY wish Honda would have just included friggin heated mirrors to start with :twisted:

So, onto the info...

First the parts. Mirror glass (glass only, no black plastic frame or goop) from Amazon:
Manufacturer: Fit System
Model Number: 90157 (Passenger Side)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KSE0YI/ref=oh_o03_s00_i00_details


Manufacturer: Fit System
Model Number: 99157 (Driver's Side)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KSCF2M/ref=oh_o03_s00_i01_details

Cost was $17 for both.

I had bought replacement mirrors from Honda, and they came in the black plastic frame. I tried removing one, with a heat gun and some patience, and I broke the glass. Then I didn’t do anything with it for months, until I found the Amazon mirrors. HOWEVER, when I was removing the unbroken Honda mirrors from the plastic frame, I laid it on the heater vent on the floor for a while, then I was able to pry it out of the frame by hand without breaking the glass :roll: Oh well.

Here is the Honda mirror removed from the frame. Unbroken.

But I didn’t feel like messing with the black goop on the back of the mirror, so I used the Amazon mirrors anyway. So I now had two empty black frames (the one with the broken mirror, I just pulled the glass out with the plastic scraper).

Here are the grip heaters I used:

Motorcycle grip heaters use two different heaters, one for the clutch side and one for the throttle side. The throttle tube is plastic and the clutch side is just the steel handlebar, so the clutch side provides more heat (because you lose some to conduction). On my bike, I use the throttle heater on both sides (for good reasons, a separate story), so I kept the two clutch heaters for the mirrors. I would recommend to just buy snowmobile grip heaters, which are both the same. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Sports-Parts-Grip-Heater-SM-12474/dp/B003CKI4FI/ref=sr_1_4?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1324261912&sr=1-4

Here are my heaters:

First step was to stick the heaters to the back of the mirrors. I put the glass in the plastic frame and marked the glass where the heater should go...then took the glass out and stuck the heater on (it has an adhesive back):

Then put the double sided foam tape on the plastic frame (this came with the mirror glass):

Then stuck the mirror in the frame:

Completed mirror (with a view of my pot rack):

After repeating for the other mirror, it was time to start on the car.

 

[pizzachef]

First step is to removed the inner door panel (including the trim piece by the mirror) see this thread:
http://www.elementownersclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41442
Here’s my door:

You’ll notice I already removed the mirror glass from the housing. This isn’t necessary yet, but go ahead if you want to. Next remove the mirror housing from the door. Its three bolts (nuts) by the mirror. Don’t forget to unplug the electrical connector:

Bring the mirror inside where its warm and you have a flat work surface. Pull off the rubber gasket thing from where the mirror bolts to the car (its just pushed on there, not glued or anything...gladly):

Now you can take out the mirror glass. You pull from the bottom edge and it pops off and scares you. I found it easier to put a flat screwdriver between the white plastic support and the black frame and it popped off much less violently. Sorry no pic.

Next remove 3 phillips screws that hold the inner assembly to the mirror housing (one is hidden in a hole):

Now remove 3 phillips screws on the underside of the housing:

CAREFUL! Honda must have thought these screws were dangerously close to vibrating themselves out, so they thankfully used lock washers AND red loctite :060: On one of mine, someone had previously had an unsuccessful attempt at removal.

After some time with the drill and an easy-out, I had it out. Now I need a new screw:

Now that the three screws are out, the housing part can be separated (somewhat, there is still a wire connecting the two) from the attachment arm. The end of the housing has a plastic cover that pops out pretty easily:

Now pull the inner mirror support assembly out of the housing a little, just enough so that the top of the metal tube is accessible (where the mirror motor wire goes through):

Feed the heater wire through the top of the tube and out the end of the mirror housing. It’ll take some fiddling:

Then trace it along the motor wiring through the attachment arm:

You probably now have something that looks like this:

 

[pizzachef]

I probably should have mentioned this earlier. When installing the mirror glass to the black frame, it may have been easier to modify the frame to make room for the wire, I’m not sure, but it was too late for me by the time I found out. The black frame snaps onto the white support and leaves no room for a wire to pass by. So I modified the white support (WARNING, NON-REVERSIBLE MOD) to allow passage of the wire.

This pic is of the unmodified white support..you can see the wire will get squished between the diamond shaped protrusion on the white support and the similar shaped hole in the black frame:

So first I cut the corner off the support. I used a hacksaw blade for a sawzall, but a dremel tool would have been quicker:

Then I realized I was going to need the dremel, so I went out to the shed and got it. Used it to carve a channel for the wire to sit in:

And for good measure, I chamfered the corner of the black frame where the wire would be to get rid of the sharp edge:

And here’s a pic of the mirror almost snapped in, with the wire in its little channel:

Now you can reassemble everything. FINALLY, a heatable mirror ready to go:

 

[pizzachef]

Mirror back on the door:

I ran the wire down behind the plastic moisture barrier and was hoping it would be long enough to get inside the car. It wasn’t. So I spliced some wires to the end and started to run them into the car. Here is the rubber boot that the wires go through (in this pic, its pulled out of the car end..possibly necessary):

Here is the end in the door:

And the other end is similar, but you can’t see it. Its in the opening where the black wire loom comes out (drop the glovebox down to get to this view):

This was the most frustrating part of the job. Unless you want to remove the heater blower, this part is a royal PITA. At least is was for me. I taped my 3 wires to a chop stick and shoved them through from the door end of the boot:

It took a lot of working around and back and forth. I think the car end of the boot is tight around the existing wire loom and its hard to get new things through. Anyway, once the end of the chop stick was through, I pulled it from the car end. This is where the blower motor really blows. Its very difficult to reach next to it to grab the wires. And there’s not enough room for the chopstick to come straight out. Make sure to use a chopstick that you can (and are willing to) break. I now need a new chopstick. And some new knuckle skin. BUT, the wires came through.

I have to say, the drivers side of this is STAGGERINGLY easier, mostly because you can reach the inner end of the opening, and partially because you’ve already done it on the passenger side. Here’s the drivers side...my new wires are the red, green, and black ones:

This completes the mirror installation. Up next is wiring.

 

[pizzachef]

To power the mirror heaters, I wanted to have the heaters energize when the rear window defogger was turned on. The safest way to do this is to have the rear defogger circuit trigger a relay so that the existing circuit is not overloaded. The new heaters can easily be powered by an add-a-circuit in the under-dash fuse box, and the relay (triggered by the rear defogger system) would turn on the heaters.

So the first step was to find the wire that is energized by the rear defogger switch. From the FSM, the wire that we want is the black/green wire coming from the E connector in the under-hood fuse box:

You can see the E connector is number 11 in this image:

So now go raise the hood and locate the under-hood fuse box. Its right behind the battery. Now disconnect the negative battery terminal:

Remove the cover for the fuse box. You'll see two screws at the rear of the box fastening two thick wire tabs (these are always hot, that's why you remove the neg battery terminal). Remove the two screws, slide the tabs back, put the screws back in the holes so you don't lose them (large circle). Now there are 3 clips/tabs holding the fuse box to the support, and 1 tab holding that black wire loom to the fuse box (on the passenger side of the box, see small circles).

Lift up the fuse box by releasing these clips.

Once you've got the box free of the support, lift it up a bit and release the cover on the underside with a flat screwdriver. Mine came off pretty easy:

Now lift up the fuse box and see if you can find the E connector. Its on the passenger side of the box, mine is brown. Hopefully you can see the black/green wire coming out of the E connector:

This is the wire you want to tap. I managed to get a tap on the wire near where it exits the box. A quick check with the multimeter verified that it is NOT energized when the car is turned on but IS energized when the rear defogger switch is on. This is the wire that will power the relay:

 

[pizzachef]

This is the wiring scheme I used. I connected both heaters to an SPDT switch (it comes with the grip heaters, and for simplicity I’ll just call it a hi/low/off switch since that’s what it says on the switch plate). Instead of powering the switch directly from the fuse box, I ran the power from the fuse box through an SPST relay (this I got from radio shack or autozone). The relay is powered by the rear defogger, and when the relay is energized, it closes the normally-open contacts which sends power to the mirror heaters. See the wiring diagram below:

After finding the correct wire to tap (black/green stripe), install a tap and run a wire (I’ll call it the relay trigger wire) into the passenger compartment. I am installing the switch and relay under the dash on the driver’s side, so that’s where I ran my relay trigger wire. In the pic below, its the green wire zip tied to the back wire loom.

A close up view of where the wire goes through the firewall. There is a thick white cable going through a rubber grommet that is behind the accelerator pedal. Its above the accelerator cable and the rubber grommet is pretty snug around the cable. I pushed a small nail into the grommet opening next to the white cable and there was just enough room to squeeze the wire next to the nail. Then I pulled the nail out.

A view from the inside, the accelerator cable is the lower cable:

Next I ran the two power wires (one for high, one for low) from each heater to the under dash area on the driver’s side. The passenger side heater was grounded to a convenient bolt behind the glovebox, circled in this pic (to get to this view, flip the glovebox down):

I then ran the wires behind and below the radio area by taping the wires to a thin rod and pushing it through to the driver’s side. On the driver’s side, the wires emerge from behind the OBD-II connector (FYI, I changed my wire colors to blue and white to match the heater wire colors, and because I was low on red and green, sorry for the confusion):

The passenger side power wires are run over to the driver’s side wires and joined (highs and lows for each mirror connected). The high and low power wires are then connected to their respective poles of the hi/low/off switch. I installed the switch under the dash. If you lay on the floor of the driver’s side and look up, this is the view you get of my switch (the other switch is for an aux power outlet that is always hot):

The back side of the switch looks like this (to get this view, remove the fuse panel cover). There is an existing hole in the plastic framing that almost fits two switches. I enlarged it a bit to fit the two switches comfortably:

The center pole of the switch is wired to pin 30 on the relay. Pin 87 goes to the add-a-circuit on the fuse box:

The relay trigger wire connects to pin 85 and pin 86 is connected to ground. I found a convenient ground on the driver’s side. Lay on the floor of the driver’s side and look up (remember to practice some ashtanga yoga before and after this exercise). Near the sidewall of the car there is a metal bracket with a nut welded to it and no bolt in the nut. A bolt from a motorcycle battery terminal fits. The head of the bolt is 10mm, I don’t know what the thread size is. I used this location to ground the heater as well as the relay. See the circle in the next pic. The metal bracket also has a hole where I zip-tied the relay (arrow). I was going to try using a nut and bolt to mount the relay, but it was too cramped up there and my back was hurting from all the yoga.

I did my best to zip tie the wires in place to clean everything up a bit, but it still looks a little messy under there. But now the heaters come on when the rear defogger is turned on. I tested them on low and the mirror glass got pretty warm quickly. My motorcycle grips heat up fast too, and they get almost too hot. I would venture to say that the high setting might not ever be needed, but I’ll have to experiment once we get some frost.

To conclude, here’s a pic of a defrosted mirror:

 

[ramblerdan]

Pizzachef, from the photos it looks like the mirrors are K Source/Fit System brand, model numbers 90157 and 99157. Is that correct? Amazon links come and go, but having the item numbers will help buyers in the long term.

 

[murso74]

you rock =D

i know you say wiring details to come but just out of curiosity did you end up goign to the rear defroster button?

 

[pizzachef]

Pizzachef, from the photos it looks like the mirrors are K Source/Fit System brand, model numbers 90157 and 99157. Is that correct? Amazon links come and go, but having the item numbers will help buyers in the long term.

You are correct, and that's good advice, I'll update the first post.

you rock =D

i know you say wiring details to come but just out of curiosity did you end up goign to the rear defroster button?

That's my intention, not quite there yet. I can easily do it with a dedicated switch, but I want to find an easy place to tap the rear defogger power wire to switch on a relay to power the mirrors. Never fear...I'll find something :-D

 

[Island E]

Nice, you beat me to it by about 2 days. My replacement mirrors are in the mail as we speak. Ordered the same ones you did from Amazon. My heater pads look identical to yours as well. The 3 wire ones for low and high heat.

 

[ApriliaGuy]

Nice!

I think I'm gonna do some turnsignals in the mirrors while i'm in there.

 

[pizzachef]

Nice, you beat me to it by about 2 days. My replacement mirrors are in the mail as we speak. Ordered the same ones you did from Amazon. My heater pads look identical to yours as well. The 3 wire ones for low and high heat.

I've honestly been putting this off for months. The cold weather must have inspired us at the same time :roll:
I'm out for a couple weeks, you might get yours running before I do.

 

[CoffeeDragon]

Nice!

I think I'm gonna do some turnsignals in the mirrors while i'm in there.

I just got my 10 8mm multi-chip amber LEDs in the mail and was eyeing up the mirrors to take them off and drill/mount the LEDs. With this mod being documented maybe I'll do the mirrors at the same time.

Thanks to everyone who refused to give up on this mod!

 

[AztecRol]

more wiring details coming soon...

I wish I could have talked to you before you wired up to the under hood fuse box.
You can get to that wire under the middle of the dash. There is a grey 14 pin
connector, number 553, that has that wire on it. It has a bunch of VSA wires
on it as well. Hard to tell from the picture if its on the drivers side or passenger
side. If I can get under there, I will let you know where it is for future reference.
If anybody else wants to use this wire, this will help them as well. It is pin 11,
it is the BLK/GRN wire. Now for the broken record part of my post. Since this
connector has EIGHT VSA wires on it, I would suggest that before any work is
done to DISCONNECT THE BATTERY!!!

 

[pizzachef]

I wish I could have talked to you before you wired up to the under hood fuse box.
You can get to that wire under the middle of the dash....

Never to late for good into :-D
I haven't run the wire yet from under the hood, just tapped a short piece for testing and then pulled it off again until I have time (and daylight) to finish the wiring.

Do you have a pic or wiring diagram reference of the connector number 553? In my FSM documentation, the rear defogger wiring shows up in 3 places and in all 3, it shows the BLK/GRN wire going unbroken from the relay (under the hood) to the rear window. So I figured it wouldn't surface anywhere convenient between the two. But if it shows up in the center console, that'd be a piece of cake!

I just got my 10 8mm multi-chip amber LEDs in the mail and was eyeing up the mirrors to take them off and drill/mount the LEDs. With this mod being documented maybe I'll do the mirrors at the same time.

Do it all at once. You'll never want to run wires through that friggin rubber tube in the door hinge again :twisted:

 

[Island E]

You'll never want to run wires through that friggin rubber tube in the door hinge again :twisted:

I can second that. I ran new wires when I replaced my stock speakers and did the passenger side door switch mod. I have an extra 3 wires in there already. Not looking forward to cramming two more through there.

 

[Alaskan_Toaster]

My wonderful wife bought the heaters for me for Christmas razz so I am going to undertake this as well. Thanks for the write up, will help. Here's a thread that I started (with some GREAT advice from other members) that might help others who want to attach it to the rear defrost like I do:

http://www.elementownersclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71420&highlight=electrical+help

Gives info on use of relays, add-a-fuse, etc. I am also planning to add the turn signal mod, so need to purchase that before cracking it all open. Will add my own pics to my thread when I get it all finished up. :roll: 8)

Thanks again for being the guinea pig!! :shock: :razz:

 

[Island E]

Just finished doing this mod on my mirrors. Little more involved than I expected. All in all it took me about 2 hours to do both. They're not wired up yet or anything, but back on the car.

So a lot of people had expressed interest in doing this mod, but nobody has followed through yet. I wonder why?

Maybe it's the work involved?

 

[pizzachef]

Just finished doing this mod on my mirrors. Little more involved than I expected. All in all it took me about 2 hours to do both. They're not wired up yet or anything, but back on the car.

Your mirrors wired up yet? How fast do they melt that North Dakota ice?

 

[pizzachef]

Pictorial is finished. I'm just waiting for a nice frosty day to take a picture of the mirror heaters in action.