Flag Mirror heat element vs. Joystick vs. Electricity

[david dolan]

Like many others on this bulletin board my SC mirrors had stopped working like they should. Sure they would grudgingly move a little bit side to side, but up and down...forget about it. I decided to investigate and came up with a few more questions than answers. I hope somebody can explain this electricity phenomenon to me so that it makes sense.

My car has power mirrors with defroster elements on both doors. After turning the key to the ON position, I started this job by observing what happened when I tried to operate the joystick for the mirrors first for the driver's side and once again for the passenger side.
The drivers side barely moved and it wasn't clearly going up and down or side to side, the passenger side was even more vague in it's movement. I then removed both mirrors and then unscrewed the 3 bolts to get to the wiring connector for the mirror. With my trusty test lamp I could now go looking for power coming down the wires. I started by testing the defroster circuit by pulling the defroster control one step out, my test lamp lit when I touched the grey wire with the green stripe-good result there!
I'll added a picture here that I found used by Glasgow 911SC previously, I hope you don't mind!?


Next, I put my test lamp probe into each of the connector pins and then moved the joystick in the 4 possible directions to see when I saw power to the pin, here are the results:

The blue & the black wires going to the same pin -power either when moved to the right or towards the back.

The 2 white wires going to the same pin - power either when moved forward or backward.

The black with a yellow stripe - power either when moved left or forward.

The other 2 pins have a single brown wire and the other has 2 brown wires coming to it - neither of these lit up as they are both ground wires.

Now these observations didn't make sense to me as I thought very simply that as I had 6 wires, it should be 2 for the defrost circuit and 1 each for the 4 possible directions of movement. Obviously, that must be telling me something different with the results I achieved. I thought perhaps the joystick switch might be faulty, so I sprayed that and it's wires with electrical contact spray and hooked it back up. There was no change in the behaviour of the mirror at this point. I then used a toothpick to make a small puncture in the rubber between the movable mirror plate and the motors and sprayed in some lithium spray. I then manually excercised the mirror up and down and side to side. The groans inside eventually went quieter and quieter. After reattaching the mirror I then tried to move it again with the joystick, it works side to side quite well and up and down if I help it a bit with my finger. So, it's a bit of a success-not great but better.
On the passenger side I found similar conditions with the test lamp showing current in more than one joystick direction for the motor pins.
I again applied lithium spray into the motor area and excersized the mirror assy. This side too now works a bit better.

I noticed something else during this job, if the defroster circuit is on, the mirrors don't seem to get any power as neither side will do anything. Is this how the system is meant to work?

So, the questions:
1) Am I using the wrong procedure to test the circuit, is it correct to see power in more than one joystick direction?
2)Is the joystick switch faulty?
3)Does the defrost circuit shut down the mirror system when it's on?
Thanks for any help given!

[mschuep]

I took apart the joystick assembly on my carrera...found a whole bunch of gunk in there, cleaned it out and now it works like new...Not sure what the differences are between the joysticks on an sc and carrera, but probably not much.

Very simple to see how it works and put back together once it is opened up. I think mine comes apart with the removal of a single pin. However, if you take it apart, I would recommend that you do it in clean, controlled area, because the small toplike swivel connectors and springs on the pins are a real PITA to find if you drop something. Hope this helps.

[david dolan]

Hi Matt,
Sounds like a reasonable alternative, I've got nothing to lose and it sounds like a project that actually might get done in under an hour.
Thanks!

[schwarz633]

I'm only guessing here, but if you would check this out using a meter, I think that you will find 2 wires for the heater, 2 wires for the up/down motor, and 2 wires for the left/right motor. The wires to the motors will reverse polarity for the different directions. I don't know what you've got for a test light, but I would be surprised if it is able to indicate polarity.

[arcsine]

look here for a wiring diagram of the mirror switch.

[schwarz633]

The wiring diagram would seem to indicate a heating element, only one motor (polarity reversing) and some sort of a solenoid which must control which axis the motor is connected to.