Gyro

Ive been assuming for months that the wiring for the mirror lights was present in the mirrors.

I was dissapointed the day i picked up my new RX8 and saw it did not have the light.

I finally disassembled my mirror to see what was within. It appears that there are no wires for the light that clearly would be in place of our black plugs. The four wires shown in the picture go to the two motors on the power mirror assembly. No plug either.

It has been said months ago (Zoom44 I believe) that it is possible for the additional wiring to be present in GT models only. As they have the heated mirrors. But what is certain is the sport package does not.

Gyro

this is the black plug.

Gyro

this is the plug from the inside.

Gyro

this is another view.

mikeb

do you think the gt mirror interals are differnet

Gyro

Well it is certain thet are different in the way of another set of wires to power the heating element. For that reason it would be interesting to see inside of a GT mirror. The wire for the lights might be with the Heater wires.

mikeb

I ask because mine is a GT
how involved is it to remove mirror like you did

Gyro

It sucked. I think there is ten bolts all together. But nevermind that.....Look at the picture showing the plug from the inside. I took that with the mirror adjusted just right ( I help it with my hands) and with a flash light, you might be able to see something.....or nothing if there is nothing to see. But its worth the look befor you go tearing up your mirror..(my next door neighbor must think I'm insane).

Another easier way. Now that we know that the sport package has 4 wires going to the mirror.
Take the tweeter enclosure off (very easy..pops right off), and you will plainly see the wire going into the mirror.
It is insulated with what looks like black tape. Just slice some of the tape away and see how many wires there are. You know the colors from my picture that the mirror control wires are blue brown and black. If there are more colors there than the GT's are wired different and therefor might have the wire for the lights.

Doctorr

If you got that far, did it look like you could 'snake' a wire back down inside the door?

Then you could tie into the little door light at the bottom for switched power, then a little cluster of colored LEDs in your 'hole' and you are modded!
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doc

Gyro

Yes you can run wire quite easily. although finding "proper power" may not be my expertise.

The stock lights warm up and down, like our dome lights when we use the keyless entry. It has been posted in the past that the ECU ties all of that together.

While you could do it...I was hoping for a connection in the mirror assembly to make things very easy. The only time I would want these light is when usung the keyless entry. tieing aftermarket lights into that might be difficult.....ar maybe not.

zoom44

thanks gyro for ripping your mirror apart, i know i didn't want to be the one to do it first. besides my wife would hurt me if she saw me at it:o now who is going to rip into their gt mirror?

mikeb

honestly, I'm scared
but I'll try

Magnesium

I looked behind the speaker and see only one additional pair of wires.

I will have to look inside the mirror to find out for sure. My hopes are low, but they could be using a common ground which frees up some uses for the wires.

I will post if I find out anything.

QuantumTheory08

....way to go Gyro.

man, I've wondered what was in there; good job and thank you for sharing.

I think electrical modification (done right of course), are by far, some of the most impressive alterations to our cars.

Keep it coming!
:D :D :D

B-Nez

Well, I might want to try. You mean that one screw on the colored part of the mirror is not enough to get the cover off? Any thank you for cracking yours open. I started playing with mine a couple of weeks ago, but lost my nerve because my screwdriver was too long to avoid rubbing it against the door panel.

Gyro

Well I saw too that the screws were too close to the body panel, so I popped the little cover where the tweeter is and removed the three small bolt that hold the entire mirror assembly on. This allowed me to pull the mirror away from the car to get the rest of the screws out.

pmacwill

um, I'll go back and look at pictures of my rx8 accident... I think I have a decent close up of the GT wires (with the mirror gone of course thanks to the truck) I'm pretty sure I recall there only being 4 wires as well. I'll post the pic when i get home tonight and look.

mikeb

thats one way of finding out:D

RodsterinFL

I am driving a 2003 Mercury Sable with the mirror lights currently while they are replacing the AC compressor on my 8. They are nice at night - light up the side of the car with the remot unlock depressed. They time out like the interior.

Omicron

Ok, so I gather from RodsterinFL's post that "mirror lights" are lights that light up the side of the car. I was wondering about that. I did do a search on them, and found nothing.

Now my question for Gyro is, have you gotten stock Mazda mirror lights to put in the cutouts? If so, from where and for how much?

Thanks...

Gyro

I have not purchased any lights for the mirrors. I disassembled the mirrors simply to investigate how easy or hard it would be to retrofit our US spec mirrors with the lights.

If there was a simple plug in the mirror housing, I would have found were I could get the lights (Japan source most likely) and installed them.
When I dicovered that our US spec cars have no exsisting wiring for the lights.....I decided to just live with out them.
As others have pointed out, It would be easy to install your own and run your own wires.....It wasnt THAT important to me. I like factory lighting and not aftermarket anyways. Also, the J-spec mirror lights are ECU controlled. They fade on and off with the interior lighting. It would be more difficult to reproduce that with an aftermarket installation

Omicron

I figure it would be pretty easy to run a new wire, and tie it into the lower door panel lights, which also fade....