Auto folding door mirrors

mmarks

Member
Messages
132
Is there a sports Maserati kit on the way?
Honestly, buy the unit for under £10, make sure you have 4 different coloured wires (about 2-3 metres of each) and give yourself a couple of hours to do it. I can explain where each wire goes.

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mmarks

Member
Messages
132
Assume it would work on QP5 too?
Ultimately yes as it is a universal kit. If the car has central locking and electric folding mirrors then this ties the 2 together. QP5 might be different wiring but it would work.

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ChrissGT

Member
Messages
341
Honestly, buy the unit for under £10, make sure you have 4 different coloured wires (about 2-3 metres of each) and give yourself a couple of hours to do it. I can explain where each wire goes.

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Such a write up would be very interesting!

My car needs the mirrors folded to park, its not a big deal but auto fold would be really helpful.
 

Zep

Moderator
Messages
9,110
If you don't have a switched live then the unit will not work and you are correct, the joystick won't fold the mirrors as the signal now goes through the new unit. The other mirror functions will work, just not the folding.
I used the cigarette lighter circuit in the fuse box for the switched live.

Does that make sense?

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Yes, thanks. And great work!
 

mmarks

Member
Messages
132
I thought I would have a go at documenting the install. Probably makes it look/sound more complicated than it actually was. Remember, it only costs around £10 and will take a couple of hours. I'm happy to answer questions if anyone gets stuck or has any queries.

68646
68647


So, first things first, remove the door cards from both doors (easy to do and there is a separate thread for this).

The unit I purchased (ebay link in a previous post), requires +12v, switched 12v and earth. These are colour coded on my unit as red, yellow and black (pretty standard).
These can be connected in one of 2 ways.

The switched 12v I couldn't find in the door loom so I connected the yellow wire to the cigarette lighter fuse in the fusebox under the steering wheel.

For the earth and permanent 12v, these can be found either in the main harness in the door (remove some of the cloth tape and there will be a thick red wire and a thick black wire - simply splice into these.

Alternatively, these can also be found in the same fuse box so no need to splice wires. The rear fog light fuse is permanent live (no idea why!) and the screw to the left of the fuse box is earthed so they can be connected there - just means an extra 2 wires coming out of the door.

The unit then needs signals to tell it that the doors are unlocked or locked. These can be found on the connector pictures below.


Signal for lock doors
68648
Signal for unlock doors
68651

On my unit (the instructions told me the wiring), the lock signal connects to the blue wire, the unlock signal to the green wire.

I used a small crimp at the end of the wires and simply pushed them into the connector so no cutting of wires.

Now that the unit has power and signals to tell it when the doors or locked/unlocked, all that is left to do is wire it up to the mirrors.

This is where it got a bit more complicated as the 2 door computers talk to each other rather than a simple 12v signal. So whilst it is easy to get the drivers mirror to work, we need to duplicate some wiring on the passenger side.

To do this, feed 4 wires from the drivers door across to the passenger door. I fed mine under the dash, through the centre console, under the passenger carpet and came out by the door hinge behind the robber door seal (a picture further on will show where it came out). Lets call these wires 1,2,3 and 4 so that it doesn't matter what colour they are (but ensure they are all different colours).

To wire the mirrors, you could remove the connector pins so no permanent changes or simply cut the wires (I went for the latter option).

So, on the drivers side, there is a small loom coming from the mirror to a connector on the top of the door.

The brown wire is to close the mirror, the brown and white wire is to open it. What we have to do it cut both those wires (pull back the plastic wire covering) and connect wire 1 and the unit grey wire (switch side close mirrors) to the part of the brown wire left in the connector. Then connect wire 2 and the unit orange wire (mirror side close mirrors) to the part of the brown wire going to the mirror.
Connect wire 3 and the unit orange wire (switch side open mirrors) to the part of the brown/white wire left in the connector. Then connect wire 4 and the unit brown wire (mirror side open mirrors) to the part of the brown wire/white going to the mirror.



At this stage, the unit will work on the drivers side - but only the drivers side.
 

mmarks

Member
Messages
132
This is the mirror connector;-
68653

Then, the final stage is to connect wire 1,2,3,4 in exactly the same places on the passenger side mirror.

I then put cloth tape round the wires leaving the doors and put the door card pack on - tested the system and all works perfectly. DONE!!!!

The wiring passed through the door looks like this;-
68654
 

Rosco

New Member
Messages
2
What are the parts to do this? Just wires? Which type to buy? The eBay link has since expired. Cool mod for sure!!!

Does the mirror knob on the door still work to fold/unfold when manually turned?
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,033
This reminds me of joke I made over on MaseratiLife a few years ago when someone made the comment what's the point of folding door mirrors.
I said they are designed to fold when the car reaches 100mph, to reduce drag.
A few hours later a few took it seriously and actually tried, reporting I was wrong as their mirrors didn't fold!!!
 

Rosco

New Member
Messages
2
Any comments for the fold/unfold unit? Not really sure what kind of part to look for....
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,543

enjybenjy

Junior Member
Messages
84
All. On top of the excellent work mmarks has done, I thought I'd have a go at this and I have the following to report:

It is possible to use a single auto fold unit per door. It turns out that you don't need the switched 12V and can wire each door side up to an individual unit with the same joystick control as before. I've done the passenger side, just waiting for another unit for the driver's side.
That does make for a simpler install, I used splice connectors all round but I think I may go ahead and solder/sleeve some of these now it's working.
Effectively you can take 12v from the door loom, earth from a speaker bolt and then splice the door open/close wires. You then only need to cut the door mirror open/close wires to feed in and out of the module.

I think I will have spent about 25 quid all in.