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heated mirrors

Removing the mirrors: With the wing mirrors in the folded position, remove them by undoing the following 10mm bolts.

Disconnect the mirror wire by pushing in the clip at one side of the connector.

Next remove the glass by pulling from the bottom of the glass. There are 2 clips at the back at the bottom, and 2 hinges at the top.

Now the hard part, removing the surround without shattering the glass. Push the top edge of the surround and work your way to a corner, very gently pushing the glass out from one of the holes in the back. When there is enough room, slide some unfolded small paper clips between the plastic and the glass every so often to prevent the surround from clipping back onto the glass.

Once you have about a third of the glass out, slide a flat knife under it to cut through the glue (sort of white "blue tac" but stronger), and continue working your way around all the edge.

There are 2 blobs of glue, so don't pull hard until you have cut both. Scrape any glue left on the glass, and put it back on the surround, as you'll need it to keep the glass in when you refit it.

Then stick the heater pad to the back of the glass, making sure that the wires are on the side that’s nearest to the car (the larger side).

Now replace the glass surround, not forgetting to feed the heater pad wires through the hole.

Feeding the heater pad wires through the wing mirror. Remove the outer black trim by removing the following screws. Note there’s also a clip (highlighted by the purple square in the pic).

Unscrew the mirror position motor.

Unscrew the mounting bracket.

This is what you should be left with.

The black plastic piece at the base of the wing mirror simply pulls off.

Once that is removed there are 3 screws. Note that these screws are pretty tight, and have been coated with a loctite substance so you may need to heat them somehow (we didn’t have to).

Remove the following 2 screws to free the folding motor from the casing.

You can now remove the mirror motors from the casing by wiggling it about.

Remove the folding motor cover. There are 3 clips, 1 at one side, 2 at the other.


Now we can thread our heater pad wires down this hole along with the other wires.

Make sure you leave enough wire for the mirror to be placed back on its hinges and clips (we also threaded our heater wires inside the sleeve along with the mirror position wires).

Now you can put all the internals of the mirror back together in the reverse order you took them out.

Decide how you wish to connect your heater wires to the wiring that will go inside the car. You can use connector blocks or a scotch-lock, but we used some old connectors from various PC components.

Here are our connectors soldered to the heater wire (ideally they should be a little shorter than this).

The finished mirrors.

Onto the car: To remove the door card: remove the 5 covers highlighted below, behind each cover is a screw that also needs to be removed.

Upon removing the door cup there’s another screw that needs to be removed.

Gently pull from the outer edges of the door card, as it’s now only held on with poppers.

You should now have something like this.

Remove the black kick plate trim that runs along the sills, just held in with clips. Now remove the cover that’s in front of the kick plate trim; it’s held in by 2 clips and a plastic screw.

You may also find it easier if you remove the trim that’s under the steering wheel, this is held on with 4 screws – then just pull free.

Now to add some wiring to the doors.

Using the ‘premium speaker wire/cable’, we fed this into the door, starting at where the wing mirror will be (this wire also had our PC component connector soldered onto it).

Tip: tie it to the existing wing mirror connector so it doesn’t fall into the door).

When putting this new wiring into the door, we followed the existing wing mirror wiring as this is positioned not to foul the door window glass. You may find this easier to do by having the window in the up position and remove the speaker.

Next is threading the heater wires through the door rubber grommet. The lower part of the grommet is simply pulled out. The upper part is attached to a light grey plastic that has to be unclipped from the door.

Now thread the wires through to the car. We found this to be quite difficult, but once you realise that the bunch of wiring that goes into the door rubber grommet is curled up just inside the car body, you can pull it out a couple of inches and this gives you much more space when threading the wires. The pic below shows the white plastic surround where they end up inside the foot well.

For the passenger side you do basically the same but they end up in a black plastic surround behind the glove box.

The heater wires from the passenger side now need to meet those in the drivers foot well. We passed them behind the centre console, above where some white plastic secured to the wall above the gear shift cables. Make sure all wiring it secured in the foot wells so it can’t be snagged.


Now to pass our wires along the drivers sill. Remove the trim around the boot/fuel cap release.

We passed the wires along the very bottom along with some existing wiring, not along the top with boot/fuel cap release cables.

Remove the rear seats. The seat base is removed by pulling on the 2 tabs then the lifting upwards. And the back just 2 bolts at the bottom of it using a 12mm socket. Then just lift upwards from the hooks at the top of the seat back.

The drivers side rear trim now needs to be removed to get access to the wiring of the heated rear window. This is held on by 2 screws, 1 plastic push thingy and several clips along the top.

Once removed you should be able to see the connector plug and wiring for the rear window defogger.

Connecting your wires. The rear window defogger is the connector that has the wires going towards the roof. In our case it was the grey connector.

The connector has 2 wires. The red/black wire was the live, so we need to tap into this. We used a large connector block with a high amp rating (15A I think) to join each of our 2 new live wires for the wing mirrors.

Then attach the 2 neutral/earth wires to a suitable ground point. We used the bolt that attaches the OEM connectors to the side of the car – this bolt is marked ‘E’.

Before replacing all our trim, time to test that they work.

With the engine running (so we don’t drain the battery), press the button on the air-con unit to activate the heated rear window.

Spray some water on the wing mirrors (you can just put your hand on the glass to feel the heat – but it’s nice to see them in action).

After a minute or two.

After a few minutes.

This is how WE fitted them. If you want to download this guide as a pdf CLICK HERE.

Follow these guidelines at your own risk and if it works for you too, enjoy your install on those misty mornings :D

Note: you are not allowed to copy, distribute or sell this how-to or its pictures, in whole or in part without our express consent.