Electrical Harness Replacement.

[DMC5180]

Oh wait, I'm dumb, I just saw this part of the post. So heated mirror + signals is doable? That's really good news for me, but I wonder too if it's necessary for all four wires. LED ground could be tapped into heater ground early on, still though the fact that it physically fits is great news! Means it's not all that challenging.

Now if you want auto-dimming side mirrors with blinkers and heat... I think it's fair to say ditch the mirrors you got and get some JDM ones! (Or just some aftermarket really)

Here is the partial install with the signal wires Red & Black.




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[Shep]

I must have gone the wrong way on mine,
maybe pulled instead of pushed, there's plenty of clearance for two 14 AWG wires by the looks of it, I shouldn't have had issues. Huh.

Teflon was the military selection for most vehicles because it saved weight and make the harness smaller. It has been found if the Teflon burns it gives off harmful gasses so it's use in aircraft is now limited. You can still buy it but cost is higher than PVC. Ebay has a lot of it often. Teflon does not have an aging or temperature problem like PVC

Silicone, not PVC, as in this stuff: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1881 -- that vendor only sells tiny sizes, but it got me wanting to ask about it. PVC's the standard, I saw silicone and now a mention of Teflon and I'm learning.

I will say that if your wires are burning in a mirror heater, you have more important issues to worry about. Like finding the nearest fire extinguisher, or simply turning the car off. This is a use case where Teflon is fine. Putting it in the engine bay however (say, as an O2 sensor wire) should probably be avoided knowing that.

[Elvis]

Mirror heating - waste of time !

I installed them and routed the wires to the connector but never connected them.
Never needed them.
Just useless extra work.
I recommended many others NOT to install them.

[Shep]

Mirror heating - waste of time !

False.

Mind sharing why you feel that way? I for one love being able to see my blind spots when it rains and/or is humid out.

[Elvis]

Never had a problem with the mirror, and I drove it thru rain and snow.

Or did you ever use the rear window defogger ? that's comparable.

Then - most people don't drive them during winter or very bad weather
anymore, these are classic cars now.

Convex mirrors are great, I always suggest them. And without the heater
they can be installed in 1-2 hours.

[DMC5180]

Whether they are needed or used is not really the point. My personal reason for installing the mirror heaters was to complete what was originally intended by the factory. The downside with using the OE wiring as configured, is that they are ON all the time. Mine have been installed many years now like that. To use them the correct way, you would need to reconfigure the feed wires and tie them to the Rear Window Defrost circuit.

As far as driving In winter conditions, NO!

Fall conditions where frost is present in the morning, YES! Fall driving is very pleasant in the D.


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[Shep]

Or did you ever use the rear window defogger ? that's comparable.

Not even remotely close, apples and oranges comparison there. Rear glass has the engine to heat it up (and does so rather quickly I should add) which is itself a defroster, but it's still mostly not needed due to the louvers blocking the rain. The rear glass is extremely well protected from the elements already.

You act like these cars are only useful on a bright sunny day, and the rest of us are heathens and abuse our cars. "these are classic cars now" -- sorry, but it IS a car, whether you like it or not, and many of us flatly disagree with the sentiment that rain is "very bad weather" (?!?!). The sheer number of daily driven DeLoreans is absurd, I would argue the "most people" bit is very presumptuous.

Frankly, we were fine discussing how to install the heated mirrors and difficulties therein until you showed up and called them "useless". I pointed out two use cases frequently cited as advantages of heated mirrors -- i.e. you're clearly wrong on two counts -- and your counter is an ad hominem attack and a strawman. I fail to see how any of this is helping others on the install process?!

[Elvis]

why do you take it so personally ?

Rear window - I needed the rear window heater as often as the mirror heater.
Never. That's what I meant.

I installed the wires but never connected them because I never needed the mirror heaters.
Not a single time in 16 years.

If you need them - go for it.

Most others will also never need them and they can save their time for installing it.
There are enough out there who confirmed me.
Really no reason to take it personally.

[Shep]

why do you take it so personally ?

1) Come in with an aggressive statement guaranteed to roll a few heads

2) Cop out with "don't take it personally" approach when others dispute the facts at hand, despite no one being personally offended in any capacity

What's hilarious is you seem to think literally zero people quantifies "enough out there who confirmed" it useless -- are we counting crickets? Nobody responded in your defense. Probably because, again, this is a "how to" thread that has now been derailed into banter about how useful / wasteful it is to do it.

Even you said you installed the wires -- why go through the hassle if you weren't debating it? That's literally the single hardest part. Frankly I'm tempted to ask for proof it's not connected knowing you did most of the job and are still stirring the pot.

One man's personal experience of sunny weather only driving doesn't mean they are universally "useless". It also doesn't speak for all the other ~8k (9k?) drivers' experiences, and shouldn't be taken as the de facto standard. Some areas have such a high humidity level, even at speed, moisture collects on the glass. Get a recent rainfall, a car in front, now the water's airborne. Combine that with post-stone-age mirror alignment, and suddenly you're down from seeing the whole 5-lane highway you're on to only your middle lane. Not a safe way to travel, it's no small wonder they're catching on as much as they are in these parts where humidity is a solid 75% in the summer.

You only need enough to aid the evaporation process so the mirrors dry themselves off and you can see the lanes beside you. Heaters provide that.

[DMCVegas]

This thread, while deviating from the original topic, has become a useful example of both why the defroster is needed, as well as a fantastic example of why diversity is important to learn from examples of others that you've never experienced.

I don't merely want glass & mirror defrosters; I NEED them because of where I drive and the environment I encounter. Allow me to explain here. Everyone else is talking about snow & water. Both are scenarios which only account for water falling from above. But no one is considering the problem of water spraying up through the engine compartment. During the monsoon season of the summer, and winter storms in Las Vegas we encounter situations like this:



It may only be a couple of inches deep at the most, but when you hit floodwater on the street, that cold water will splash up onto the engine block, manifolds, and the entire exhaust system. When that happens, it's like a bomb going off in the engine compartment with steam billowing out. It will create a trail of steam behind the car that exhausts out of the louvers, and will immediately fog up the rear glass and block all rear vision.

The fun bonus is also when the car or huge truck in the lane next to you decides to hit the water and splash a huge tidal wave of floodwater all over your hood, windscreen, and the side of your car. Sure I already have the wipers going to clear the windscreen, but now my side mirrors are completely useless since they're fogged over. So with the rear glass and side mirrors fogged over, I'm blind to the cars on the sides and rear of me. So I do in fact use the defrosters all around me. But even with the stock defroster, I can only recover rear vision and not sides. Can't even turn my head since the outer quarter panel glass is totally fogged over as well.

Now if you're in an environment where you don't drive during rain storms, let alone an area no subject to such drainage problems, you'll probably never see this problem. Even if you drove during a snow storm, the water is frozen and won't have the same problems with the engine compartment, and probably not with the side mirrors. Hell, most of you don't really even realize this problem exists because pretty much any front-engined car has a big rubber gasket like a door seal that goes all across the top of the firewall to prevent that steam from coming up to fog your windshield to blind you. Check your other cars. Hell, Google image search any car out there and see it for yourself.

Now having said all of this, I don't look down on people who don't drive their cars year round. Granted some DeLoreans have never even been in the rain, and that simply isn't something I can related to. Because there are certain things that I absolutely need. Just like the door vents. Lots of people talk about sealing them off. Not an option for me as I still need them to defrost the door glass and to stave off the solar heat in the summer, so I fixed the ducting instead of just sealing everything off. Was it allot of work? Yup. But it needed to be done. But still, I'm not going to tell anyone how to enjoy their cars...just so long as you don't tell me how to enjoy mine. I had mine as a daily driver for years, and encountered things from rain & snow to raw sewage spills. I've actually used my car as intended. Not everyone does, and that's fine. But please, realize that your experiences are not going to be the same as those which others will have, and that means that our needs will be different as well. A modification that might be considered an unnecessary waste of time for one person, isn't the case for someone else's car who may actually need it.