E46 - Made non-folding, OEM M3 mirrors auto fold DIY. Warning, lots of pics!

TKC · #1 12-06-2008, 11:04 PM

DIY: Made non-folding, OEM M3 mirrors auto fold.

A brief background:

I had a set of replica M3 mirrors on my car. Everyone said they’re hideous and they have the nickname “Elephant Balls”…… so I had the chance to pick up a set of OEM M3 mirrors for a great deal, so I bought them. Unfortunatly, these OEM M3 mirrors did not autofold, a feature that I really liked about my replicas.

Well it just so happened that I had an extra set of replicas lying around that I bought because the glass on one of my mirrors was broken when I bought it.

So what I did was swap out the internals from the replicas to the OEM. Here’s how.

Getting started:

Remove the foam liner:

Go to the plug…..

Lift the tab out…

And slide the wires out of the casing.

Make note of these set of wires, as this is the side the 2 wires that add the autofold will connect to:

Remove the glass by Tilting the mirror all the way up, look inside along the bottom. You’ll find a little prong you can slide a thin screwdriver into. Slide it in and push to the right to unlock the ring holding the mirror in….

Once off, pull off the 2 wires that are for the heated mirror function:

Undo the 3 screws holding the glass mount and remove it:

Unplug it and remove it

Undo the 5 screws holding the base inside the housing:

Once it’s removed, there’s one last screw holding the folding arm in place. Remove it as well:

In the base, you’ll find 2 screws holding the folding arm to the base. Remove them.

You’ll find 4 screws holding the arm mount to the arm. Remove them:

On the top of the elbow, LOOSEN, but don’t remove the 3 screws that hold the arm to the elbow.

TKC · #2 12-06-2008, 11:04 PM

Ok, here’s the space mirror I had lying around. Basically, repeat all the above steps for this mirror as well.

Once you get to the same point you were at with the OEM one, remove those final 3 screws at each elbow and swap that motor from the AUTOFOLDING elbow into the OEM M3 one. This is the mechanism/motor that does the autofolding function. It is accompanied with a Blue and White wire. Thread these 2 wires along with the rest of the wires.

When you start re-installing everything, I suggest using some loctite cause I’ve experienced mirrors loosening up over time and becoming wobbly.

Notice now, the Blue and White wires now included:

Put things back together in the reverse order you took them apart:

I used the help of a little screwdriver to help thread the new blue and white wires through the rubber grommet.

Ok, so from the old mirror, I cut off the old wire ends that go into the harness. I tapped them to the blue and white wires and plugged them into harness. If you recall from one of the earlier pics that shows the wire order, the colors should go in this sequence:

Green
Black
Grey
Red
White (the new one you just wired in)
Blue (the other new one you just wired in)

(I apologize, but I broke the connector that was on my blue wire, so I used a grey one, so in this picture the last wire isn’t the correct color like yours should be) :

The finished product:

Put the mirrors back on the car!!!

A quick video of them in action!

I’ll update this with a nice new pic of my car soon!

Hope this was useful, if not for the same purpose I did, at least to help with some mirror questions some may have.

Thanks!

ZeroG · #3 12-06-2008, 11:09 PM

Wow, nice write up. I am interested in the replicas as the internals looked pretty much OEM. I did the same thing as you except I used OEM Auto Folding Mirrors, and the Non-Folding Mirrors that came on my M3. The reason I did it though was to avoid the cost of painting.

It was a similar process except pretty much plug and play. I did not have to modify the wiring in anyway.

TKC · #4 12-06-2008, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZeroG

Wow, nice write up. I am interested in the replicas as the internals looked pretty much OEM. I did the same thing as you except I used OEM Auto Folding Mirrors, and the Non-Folding Mirrors that came on my M3. The reason I did it though was to avoid the cost of painting.

It was a similar process except pretty much plug and play. I did not have to modify the wiring in anyway.

Yea, I was just going to swap the whole internals from one to the other, but found out the based was different and the screw holes didn't line up.

At that point, I knew the only way to do it was to swap in only the motor, and luckily for me, it worked!

I'm happy!