'88 TC Mirror Wires

[Lutrova]

I'm swapping a junkyard mirror from either an '88 or '89 Town Car onto my '87. Unfortunately, the connectors and wire colors are totally different from one year to the other. I should be able to repin the connectors on my car to take the new mirror's wires, but I'm taking a stab in the dark as to what goes where. If anyone has wiring diagrams from an '88 or '89, perhaps you could shed some light as to what goes where. I can always try just plugging things in and seeing what works, so long as I don't accidentally fry the mirror motor or somehow short the circuit.

The '88(?) mirror had five pins from six wires: Yellow (pair), Magenta, Green/Blue Stripe, Green, and Black.
My '87 has two separate connectors, a two pin: Black (or Navy?) and Black/Blue dash, and a three pin: Yellow (pair), Red, and White(ish).

I figure the paired yellow wires should match from one to the other. Beyond that it gets a little murky.


The junkyard connector


The two connectors from my '87.

[gadget73]

The two pin connector is for the heater

the 3 are the power mirror.

I did this with mine years ago, found nice NOS 88 mirrors and swapped the connectors from the 86 onto them. I seem to recall the colors mostly being the same, or at least similar enough that it was reasonably obvious what did which. Looks like both have yellow and red, those are what they are. The heater ones should both be dark, so whatever is left is the last position.

if it goes left/right instead of up/down, reverse the two wires that aren't the yellow. Yellow should be the common for both motors.

[Lutrova]

Well one of the heater wires was black and the other was one of the green wires. I don't recall which one, but I went with my gut and it all worked out. Hopefully the heater wires can be reversed though, because I have no idea whether I got the pins right on that one.

It's nice to have a right mirror again, and for the first time I have the proper convex glass. It feels like these mirrors are a little more convex than usual, perhaps because of the small size. Or maybe I'm just imagining it.

[gadget73]

its just a resistor, it doesn't care about polarity. It won't get cold if you run it backwards.

the small size is sort of a pain in the ass. I have mine all set so that I have the barest little bit of overlap between them. Something at the far outer edge of the rear view is just barely on the inner edge of the side mirrors. Its the only way to get any sort of decent field of vision out of these little postage stamps. Takes a bit to get use to initially but once you get used to not seeing the same car in all 3 mirrors, the expansion on what you do actually see is pretty nice.

[Lutrova]

I've definitely set my side mirrors out farther in recent years than when I was mostly driving on two lane roads. These days I need the side mirrors for lane changes on the freeway, particularly in Texas where it's five-plus lanes of anything goes.

At least with the mirrors so small you never have to worry about them getting clipped at a drive thru or parking lot.

[87gtVIC]

At least with the mirrors so small you never have to worry about them getting clipped at a drive thru or parking lot.

Yeah at that point your whole car gets side swiped.