Georgieb

Another one of those upgrades I've been meaning to complete in order to get rid of the generic garage door opener which clips to my visor. I had the standard Rear view mirror in my car and finding the Homelink Mirror with Compass took some doing on eBay as I had no intention of paying the OEM price of $500.00 + dollars. I finally found what I was looking for @ approximately $140.00 + shipping.

In addition you will need the harness kit since the basic mirror only has two wires in the connector for the blinking red nose (alarm). The harness kit add-on allows for power, GND and auto-dim to work so that this feature is canceled when the car is in reverse gear. Autodim works in tandem with the side mirrors. The part number for the harness kit is #61 12 0 140 175. Realoem.com has this part for approximately $38.00.

Georgieb

Routing the harness to the driver-side foot-well and up to the mirror can be a bit tricky. In order to do this we have to remove some paneling and pull the headliner back a bit. The supply cable that we will be connecting to resides in this location so no choice.

01) First remove the Philips screws holding the panel that covers the steering column. One screw is hidden behind the carpeting which covers the bottom portion of the center console/shifter. This panel also has two friction clips that have to be removed by pulling downwards on the panel (and away from the steering wheel) once all screws are removed.

02) Once the panel comes loose disconnect the wires which are hooked up to the small speaker mounted to the panel.

Georgieb

I should have mentioned this earlier; before you go any further disconnect the battery as a safety precaution by removing the negative lead from the battery terminal with a 10mm socket. We will be dealing with wiring under the dash and also removing the driver-side pillar trim to route our wires up to the headliner. Behind this trim sits an airbag so caution is needed.

Georgieb

Next stage is to remove the driver side pillar cover which will expose the airbag and also allow a portal for us to fish our cable up to the headliner. The cover has one screw holding it in place hidden behind the airbag logo. There is also a friction fitting in the middle of the pillar. Once the screw is removed, hold onto the middle of the pillar firmly and pull towards you. It should pop right out. There is also an insert tab at the bottom side of the cover which aligns to an associated slot in the dash. Work the panel from left to right and upwards and it should come free with relative ease.

BlaSTiWi

Yup great mod! Which kind you got? The compass w/ the letters made of like from a dot matrix or the older kind?

Uppps sorry ... didn't mean to cut your thread in the middle

Georgieb

Next we will remove the driver-side visor which will then allow us to pull the headliner away from the roof just enough to route our cable. Remove the finish-clip cover on the left side of the visor and then unscrew the Torx screw holding it in place. Also remove the associated clip on the right side of the visor and headliner. Lastly disconnect the cable which feeds power to the visor and the entire assembly can then be removed.

Georgieb

The next stage is to run the wire harness down the side pillar, through an opening in the corner of the dashboard and into the driver side foot-well. This can be a bit tricky as there is surprisingly not much room for the wire to be routed. Firmly tape the three wires from the harness to one end of a straightened wire hanger. To find an opening to pass the wires through,I wedged myself in the driver foot-well armed with a flash light and a long, thin screwdriver. Looking upwards into the corner you will see a ridged sound-deadening piece of foam wedged in the very bottom corner of the windshield where the pillar meets the dashboard. Route the wires through this. To help with further define where this is, it is directly adjacent to the slot used to hold the pillar panel in place.

A quick reminder to also thread the wires through the included strain-relief grommet and up to the connector portion of the harness prior to routing it through the dash. If you forget to do this you will have to cut the grommet later to make it fit.

Georgieb

Next stage is in removing the mirror. Here is where I ran into a major snag and where my how-to stops for now!!! removing the housing/base-plate which surrounds the mirror should be a fairly simplistic task as it clips together like a clambshell around the mirror mounting arm. Whiles trying to separate this clambshell I heard a load CRACK. At that point my heart stopped. Much to my dismay and realizing my worst fear, I had somehow managed to crack my windshield!!!!!!! What a disastrous outcome. I think by pulling forwards on the clambshell housing, I put pressure on the clip which is glued to the windshield and holds the mirror in place. To be honest I am really surprised with how easy I was able to break it.

Georgieb

So this is where it ends for now. As a word of caution, be EXTREMELY careful when removing the existing mirror. I am a very meticulous person and always pay firm attention to details, and am very patient when working on my car. Somehow despite all this I made a fatal and costly error.

Ironically I had a preexisting appointment with my body shop to paint and install a splitter for my front end this afternoon. They are now undertaking the task of replacing my entire windshield with rain sensor in addition to this.

The windshield will be an $1,100.00 replacement and I'm still working out the details with my insurance company on how to cover this cost.

Georgieb

To draw on the positives, I did successfully hook the harness up to the cabling in the driver foot-well and temporary plugged the mirror in to verify functionality. Everything worked like a charm.

If there are any readers left that still trust me enough to continue to follow this how-to , two of the three conductors connect to the large harness at the backside of the foot-well and directly adjacent to the steering column. (It runs directly into the firewall). Remove the tape shroud around this harness to reveal the wire bunch and connect Wire color brown/black-stripe and wire color Blue/Yellow-strip to the harness with the included splices supplied in the kit. The harness connects in parallel with these conductors.

The third wire is a Green/White-stripe which connects to a smaller harness (closest to you) and goes up to the steering wheel and cluster panel. (I'll provide a pic of this in a short while also).