Heated door mirrors on a fender?

Anyone done it?

It's a PITA this weather, with em freezin up all the time.

Attaching some wire-wound resistors to the back of the glass with epoxy and connecting them to a fused battery feed, via a relay trigged by the heated rear window, seems fairly straightforward. The thing that's puzzling me is how to run the wiring out there!

Any bright ideas?

Drill some holes?

I did read up on it a while back because It was something I wanted to do, but never got around to (along with heated screen). You can get the heated pads off ebay for cheap. Think they were £10/pair.

anyway. found this: Installing Mirror Heating to a Land Rover Defender

looks like the neatest solution and is what i have seen elsewhere before.

G

years ago i used the elements out of a 12v toaster (can you still get them ?) behind the mirror glass of an old Bedford truck, feeding the wiring through one of the rust holes in the window frame - worked perfectly

you can buy flat resistive wire, wind 10 or 20 turns on some thin mica and away you go

can't see how you'd get the wiring into a depender without drilling holes thou

ere ya go

RDX Heated Mirror kit LandRover 90/110 Defender NEW on eBay (end time 10-Jan-10 08:34:11 GMT)

Top man Griff - thanks!

and

RDX Heated Mirror kit LandRover 90/110 Defender NEW on eBay (end time 19-Jan-10 11:58:57 GMT)

Cheers Sean - reckon I might buy that if I get any chrimbo munny

£10/side. cant argue with that.

G

That looks ace - now you gotta find a way to not knock yer mirrors off on that lane i lost mine on last summer

I`ve actually got a wire running from the dash area, passed the door rubber and into the passenger side mirror! Is this a heated mirror? Was it an optional extra from new?
Mind you, it doesn`t work, or I cant find the switch
Anyone else got one heated mirror?

I know this thread is a year old, but did anyone get round to fitting the RDX heated mirror kits off eBay? I've just bought a set so it'll be on my "to do" list over Christmas. I reckon the way that link above describes it has got to be the way to go.

As well as the previous link, there was also a write up on how to install them on the Devon 4x4 forum, but I cant find it lately.

I've had them on my 90 for nearly 10-years now (along with the heated windscreen) and they are excellent. Originally I used extra-large OE patern Britax mirrors with stick-on heater elements but last year changed to heated Spafax ones (available at a decent price through Bearmach).
The elements came from my local commercial motor-factors and are easily trimmed to size, the switch came from VWP (a nice OE style one with the correct symbol) and the wiring ran is small corrugated conduit which went along the inside of the arms into the underside of the mirror-head. The installation was very neat & tidy.
The Spafax mirrors are the 'unbreakable' type and while being smaller than the mirrors I had been using, are still larger than the normal Defender ones. They came with the wiring pre-fitted and that runs the same way through the arms into the back of the mirror head. Despite costing 5-times what my original ones did I don't really like them as the image is not as stable or clear and if I hadn't already sold the old mirrors I would have refitted them.

I finally finished my heated mirror installation. I bought a pair of the RDX elements off fleabay and then followed this guide: Installing Mirror Heating to a Land Rover Defender

I'm really chuffed with the result - you'd be hard pressed to tell there are wires running to the mirrors. Just need some frosty mornings to test them out now!

Instantsquid, did you use your original mirrors and arms?

The Badger said:

Instantsquid, did you use your original mirrors and arms?

Click to expand...

Yep. You'd never know they're heated now - stealth installation and all that

Impressive mod Ian - seriously tempted....

Yeah, it took me a little while to do it - but the end result was definitely worth the effort. Glad I didn't do the bodge-job with wires on show.

Thought I would try reinvigorate this thread

Just started On sunday. At the same time I also decided to add Defender Mirrors to the 80".

To this end I actually bought a new set of mirrors (Britpart). When I removed the seal around the mirror glass I found that the mirror glass of teh Britpart was actually siliconed into the bezel.

Before doing anything too drastic I thought I would investigate the original Brittax heads, result the glass was merely retained by some bluetack.

So I swapped heads while fettling.

Fitting the element is quite simple, the easiest method is to remove teh mirror head and submerge int in hot water, this softens the rubber seal so it can easilly be removed.

Once the Glass is dried the element sticks to the rear with no problem.



Next you have to decide how the get the cable out. The instructions say to drill a hole to the back of the mirror base and let the wire out there. This however looks untidy whith wires floating around, plus you will need some play for adjusting the mirror, Tie wraps to fasten to the arm etc, rather inellegant.

Fortunately I recently bumped ito a fellow club member that had recently installed them on his Puma, he recommended drilling down the centre of the mirror shaft and into the mirror there,





The wirth then need feeding through the hinge of the mirror to hide it. I did this by removing the plastic lug at the top of the arm and drilling at an angle down into the void, then used a drimel to polish off the shark edges.



The cable was then fed throught the mirror body and the heads reassembled



The cable can then be threaded down the arm pivot, then back to the hinge and down out of the bottom, after drilling the drain hole out to accept the cable, I also added a new drain hole just in case.



While contemplating the mods to the mirror arms I had also formulated a plan to improve the fitting of my Milenco Caravan mirrors of which I am always paranoid of the m falling off. So I decided to drill through the arms to simplify and improve the fixings by doing away with the actual clamps.

http://imageshack.com/scaled/800x600/208/z3ge.jpg[/IMG

[IMG]http://imageshack.com/scaled/800x600/812/gnaw.jpg

This is where I ran out of time last night. I plan to wrap the cable under the hinge rather than drilling the hinge and door and then in through the door seam. I will probably wrap the cable around the seam rather than drill through.

Not sure when I will get round to the actual installation as I now need to investigate how to get into the dashboard from each end to run the cables.

The Britpart set are cheap and work fine. As you'd expect from Britpart