Heating Car Mirrors

I was travelling home from work in the dark and someone coming the other way clipped my door mirror needing to replace the glass it was time to add something to make the cold English mornings easier to handle.

I have left out the details on the car as this could be used on many different cars.

If you are not compitant at making repairs and altering car electrics this is not for you and you should only make these alterations at your own saftey in other words keep safe it's not my fault.

For this step I had seen some DIY heated grips for motorcycles on a forum (www.yammy100.com) and looked them up on Ebay they are only a few pounds delivered and the heating elements are 9 x 9cm which will cover a large area of the mirror glass.
I also ordered a new glass from Ebay and purchased some double sided foam tape locally.

For ease I removed the whole assembly from the car so I could remove all the broken glass and figure out the best way to get the wiring back in to the door.

The new glass came with a foam tape sticky strip on it but it would have insulated the heat from the glass so I peeled most of it off and was left with a thin sticky bit which with a little heat from my wife's crafting heat gun and rubbing it came off then a wipe over with thinners and it was clean.

The mirror back was missing a corner from the glass being broken so using this to let the wiring go around the back I worked out where the heat element would fit best and then put it directly on the back of the mirror and used the foam tape to secure it around the edges and then filled in the gaps (don't seem to have the photo of this step).

I then routed the wiring through and stuck the glass on.

Lastly I put it all back together and it will go back on the car and I will pick up a feed from the rear window defroster and wire it into that so it's on the timer relay and one press of a button for a nice clear view.

While the whole mirror doesn't defrost the main part does and drys out giving a nice clear view.