Making G3 sport mirrors power adjustable

For anyone tired of adjusting their mirrors manually, take a look at this:

I converted mine to power a bunch of years ago when I noticed that a friend's 98 LeSabre had power adjustable mirrors that were roughly the same size as our sport mirrors.  Adjusting my stock mirrors was a never-ending PITA, so on a crazy experiment I figured I'd try to convert my mirrors to power, but foolishly I didn't document it properly because frankly I didn't expect it to work. I was eventually planning to do another set for resale and document it better, but I simply don't have the time right now.

Therefore I'm reposting the info here from another thread as best I can remember on how the procedure went, and I am happy to help out anyone who wants to take a run at it.  If you decide to tackle it, please take photos of the process and post them here.

•  The only G3 things to keep are the actual mirror housing and the mirror itself (with the black plastic mount plate the mirror is glued to).  All the mechanicals hit the trash.

•  For the passenger mirror you'll have to drill about a 3/8" hole through the pedestal into the mirror housing, and again in the door itself for the wiring to go through.  The drivers side will already have these for the old remote cable.

•  You'll need to pick up a pair of '98 LeSabre power mirrors off ebay and cut away the plastic housing carefully so you are left with just the mirror motors and their flat mirror mounting face plate.  These are just the right size to fit in our sport mirrors, though the mirror mount plate will need some slight flattening with a file on the top and bottom IIRC.  I used the non-heated mirrors as the car never sees winter.  If you opt for the heated ones, you'll have to modify the wiring diagram to suit.

•  A homemade steel L bracket will have the motor bolted to it, and there's a lot of trial-and-error fitting here to get the thing oriented right in the housing so the G3 mirror will be positioned correctly.  Once it's right, the wiring gets fed through, and the bracket/motor assembly gets JB welded in place inside the mirror housing.  The G3 mirror (with some trimming to the back of the plastic plate IIRC) can be made to snap onto the motor mount plate.

•  For a control, I used a 98-02 Camaro mirror switch, which will fit inside our existing door escutcheon almost perfectly.  It allows you to switch mirrors simply by twisting it CW/CCW.  It will be too tall to put the retaining clip back, but will actually be held in place by the door sheet metal when you put the door trim back.  You just have to wrap some electrical tape around it for a friction fit in the escutcheon as you put the door panel back.

•  I will see if there's a way to post the wiring diagram, but in the meantime just PM me for it.  It's actually pretty simple, and you can tap the feed from a spare port on your fuse box --  or really just about any existing circuit as it's a super low current draw.

It works great, but if I did another one I would add some JB weld to the top of the bracket as well (only did the bottom) to eliminate the little bit of vibration it gets when standing at idle in gear.

Let me know of any Q!

Mark

Okay, here's the wiring diagram.  The wire colors aren't exactly the same from the Camaro switch to the LeSabre mirrors, so note where you'll be splicing together different colored wires.  Obviously the wiring from the switch to the left mirror all happens inside your drivers door, while the right mirror wires have to go all the way to the other door -- I simply kept everything the same length in the diagram for clarity's sake.

In mine the ORN power comes from the power lock breaker as I wanted them to be active even if the car is off, but as I mentioned above just about any fused + feed will do.  The BLK ground can go to any good sheet metal ground.

I didn't include the internal electrical diagram for the switch or the mirror motors (I figured no one would care), but I have them if you need them.

You have Been Stickied

Thats freaking awsome. I usually see myself as a creative person that is capable of making things work. But this is just pure genius.

Thank you very much! I'm always on the lookout to see how I can retrofit later/better technology into our cars.

I agree that no-one is likely to need the internal switch diagrams, but you might go ahead and post them for the sake of completeness. Might as well have all the info in one place. 
My first question is going to be: how do you remove the glass from our bullet mirror without breaking it?

Keep in mind I'm working off cobweb-covered memory here.

Flip the mirror upside down and there are two screws inside the pedestal bolting it to the bottom of the mirror housing. These will likely be frozen solid, so I do definitely remember having to soak them in WD-40 for a week before they could be broken free.

IIRC, those screws also hold in place (from the underside) the cast mount inside the mirror housing that actually holds the mirror adjuster mechanism and mirror, and the whole assembly should just kind of fall out the front.

Also IIRC, afterward I seem to recall discovering that the black plastic mirror plate kind of snaps onto the adjuster assembly and theoretically could have just been pried off. But don't take my word for that and start prying -- if you have the Fisher body manual, it might be in there. I'll dig mine out when I get home and see if there's more detail on it.

In the meantime, if it helps, here is the LeSabre wiring diagram:




And the Camaro wring diagram:




Looking at them now reminds me that the Lesabre mirrors I actually scored off ebay for this had different color wires than the factory diagram, hence the different colors in my own diagram up top. So the key will be to match the correct feed from the switch to the corresponding control wire in the mirror.