Swapping from 'off road' to 'sport' side rear view mirrors

Hey, first time on here. I'm looking for some technical assistance. I have a 2012 trd off road & have decided to spend the $ and get the new side rear view mirrors like the 12 & 13 sport models have with the integrated turn signals. I thought this was going to be an easy plug & play process. However, I plugged them in & it's not working??? The 'truck side' plug has 5 wires going into it & the plug on the stock 'off road' rear view mirror on has 3 wires. So, I thought those extra 2 wires on the truck side plug must be dedicated for the blinkers??? I still think they are, I must just be missing something further back in the wiring. Has anyone done this with success, or does anyone have any knowledge of this that they could share? Your help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Hmmm I am 100% sure it's been done. Trying to figure out though if it was tacos with the signal incorporated or sequoias with the signal AND heater that I saw....not sure man. Keep digging through the search results though. I'll bet you find something

 

I was thinking about this upgrade. Did you ever get it to work?

 

I did get it to work. I wasn't able to figure out the whole plug & play idea, but I know it's in there somewhere. So, I went ahead & just wired them myself. It's actually a pretty simple process that only took me about 3 hours on a Saturday morning. I tapped into the rear tail light wires that are in the kick panel on the driver side. Once I found them, it was just a simple process of running new wires from the new rear view mirror wires & tapping into the existing rear turn signal wires. I used the below thread to find the rear tail light wires & it worked out great! The new turn signals sync perfectly with the existing front & back blinkers. Let me know if I can be of any additional help...

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/233340-turn-signals-independent-drl.html

 

Thanks for the info. Do you mind sharing where you purchased the mirrors from?

 

+1 and part numbers?

 

I'm located in AZ & I just went to my parts guy @ the dealer (Superstition Springs Toyota). I just told him the year & color of my Tacoma & he had both the paint to match mirrors & door handles ready for me to pick up the next day. The rear view mirrors are not cheap, but I think they look great on the truck once finished. A clean factory look for the 'off road' edition.

 

I'm thinking these are the parts I need.

http://www.trademotion.com/parts/2012/TOYOTA/TACOMA/?siteid=214001&vehicleid=1502962&diagram=8512605&diagramCallOut=4

It looks like each mirror assembly (#4) is $188 and each painted mirror cover (#7) is $40. So in theory I would be looking at $456 for this project.

 

$40 cheaper for the pair here
http://www.parts.com/parts/2012/TOYOTA/TACOMA/?siteid=2&vehicleid=1502962&section=BODY%20HARDWARE&group=FRONT%20DOOR&subgroup=OUTSIDE%20MIRRORS

i want to do this as well...

 

Thanks for the link, now it's down to $393 for the parts. If it was plug and play I would probably do it; thinking about it for now.

How much you think I could get for the used black mirrors (power)?

 

i think like anything else we take off our base/stock trucks... they are worthless. the value would be to just hang onto them, when you sell the truck, swap them back, and sell the signal mirrors for prob at least $200 and recover the cost then.

(like guys who sell their stock headunits, i just feel like its very short sighted for a miniscule gain/offset)

i need to search around about removing the stock mirrors, im assuming its just remove the door panel and just go from there. this is on my short list, hopefully this or next quarter. i think we could call this plug and play cause its just plug, then one signal wire to tap for each mirror, they are easy to find. going through the trouble and not gaining heated mirrors is a drag. but if i had to pick id take the paint and signal over the heat

 

I live in an apartment downtown; not lots of space to be storing parts. Although I agree with you on the head unit; that is one thing I would hold on to for resale.

OP, how simple was the physical install (other than wiring)?

 

Other than the wiring, the install is really easy & fast. You just have to remove the door panel & the small triangular piece above the door panel. After that, it's as simple as removing three bolts & unplugging it. The new one goes in just as easy. If you haven't removed the door panel before, take a look at some threads on here (or) watch the youtube video on how to remove/replace a rear view mirror for tacoma (or) how to remove a front door panel for tacoma. This will just help direct you a bit if you're worried about breaking anything. It's also good to watch so that you don't accidentally lose or break any little clips that you need to reuse.

PS - The wiring wasn't difficult either, once I had a game plan. I was just a little intimidated because I had never done any type of automotive wiring before. It was a great learning experience for me though!

 

Brandon thanks for your help, this was a very encouraging thread, im gonna do this.

post up some pictures, we'd love to see them if you have any.

 

subbed

 

I'm guessing '12 model mirrors will work with other 2nd Gens?

Matt

 

I don't see why not. I find it hard to justify that cost though for side mirrors without defrost.

Also for clarification and to eliminate any confusion this thread pertains to side view mirrors. The rear view mirror is inside the vehicle mounted on the windshield.

 

Ummm, yeah, we like pics of this kind of stuff going on. OP, where the pics? I know there are pics in the other threads but those don't count, lol.............

 

Let me see if I can get a few quick pictures uploaded successfully... I'm sorry that I don't have in depth pictures of the entire process, especially because I'm in the technical chat section of this forum... sorry again! Anyway, here's a few pictures of my project done as well as a close up of where I found my blinker wires to tie into. Again, I'm sure there may be some better way to do this, but this is how I did it... Picture 2 is a close up of my fuse panel behind the coin tray on the driver side (again mine is a 2012 trd off road) so other panels make look a little different. If yours looks like this, I just turned the truck on & then turned on the blinker for the driver side. While the blinker was on, I took my 12v test light & with a good ground inserted it into each slot to see if I could find a surging power that matched my blinker. I did. The wires that worked for me were the blue wire with the white stripe in the top #2 position & the solid green wire in the lower #3 position. Once I found that these were the two wires I needed (one was driver side & the other was passenger side), I followed this specific wire bundle down & found that it was located behind the driver side kick panel (see picture 4). So now it was time to remove everything carefully. First I removed the lower horizontal plastic part of the door well by just pulling up gently starting @ the front of the door & working my way back. Second I removed the black foot rest by just pulling kind of forcefully directly back toward myself. FYI - the dealership said that these are one time use pieces & would break when I removed it. Mine did not & it reinstalled perfectly. Once that was off, I simply removed one twist off screw & removed the driver side kick panel.

Now I had enough open room to work. I followed the wire bundle about halfway down the kick panel area & cut a small section out of the electrical tape wrapping to expose the wires that I needed (make sure to remember which color is driver side & which color is passenger side). At this point, I also had both of my door panels removed as well as the interior triangular plastic piece that covers the bolts for each side rear view mirror. I also had the new side rear view mirrors already bolted onto the truck, but not plugged in. My next move was measure my new wire runs for each side, give myself a little bit extra for screw ups & then did my wire runs. The hardest part to these runs were fishing the wire through the rubber boot that goes from the door to the body of the truck. This is located behind each kick panel, so the passenger side kick panel has to be removed as well. This is really not that big of deal though. I purchased a couple of the large zip ties (I think they were about 12"), cut the large ends of both of them & then electrical taped them together to make one long flexible fishing tool. I then made a loop in the end of my new wire run & electrical taped that to my homemade zip tie tool. I then sprayed a little bit of WD40 on it & wiped it down so that it could navigate somewhat smoothly through all of the existing wires & turns in the boot. Once I had the wire runs complete, I used quick connects @ the driver side kick panel. I was skeptical to use these at first until I took a closer look at the factory wiring & saw that they were used everywhere. Once those connections were done, I cut my wires to the desired length @ each door for my connection to the new side rear view mirrors.

The new side rear view mirrors have 5 wires coming into the plug. 3 are just look the factory mirrors that you took off & the other two operate the blinker. The colored one is the power & the white one is the ground. I clipped these two wires from the back of the new rear view mirror plug & stripped them to prepare my connection. Now I soldered my new wire run to the colored wire of my new side rear view mirror & shrink wrapped it (side note: I never soldered before in my life, but I bought a cheap gun & taught myself. I highly recommend the learning experience & it's a good solid connection). Now I also soldered an extending wire to the ground wire & shrink wrapped that as well. I needed to do this in order to find a good grounding bolt on my door. I found one pretty close by, but I still needed the extension. I used a circular ring adapter @ the end of my grounding wire, ran the bolt through it & screwed it back into the door. I did this process for both the driver & passenger side.

Before I put everything back, I turned on the truck & tested the blinkers & everything worked! The last thing I had to do is just find a good way to hide & secure my wire run from the passenger side to the driver side kick panel. It was pretty easy. I just followed another wire run & zip tied it to that. Now it was time to just go through the satisfying process of putting everything back together @ your leisure & enjoying the fact that you customized your tacoma all on your own... at least that's what I did. I hope this little write up really helps anyone trying to do this out there. I really wanted to make this change for a while & couldn't find much help. So if I can help a brother on Tacomaworld, it would be very satisfying! Also, to all of you tech guys, if this write up is below par, forgive me. I'm somewhat of a rookie, learning as I go...

PS - Let me know if I can be of any additional help with this install...

I hope this helps guys...
Thanks

 

that is one sick truck!!!

thank you for the awesome write up, im looking forward to doing this!