TVR Wedge Electric Door Mirrors.

Article by: Ian Sayer

Sooner or later, you’ll need to pull the centre console apart and when you do, some or all of the wires will detach themselves from the joystick that controls the electric mirrors. I know; it happened to me. So having tried a couple of combinations, I gave up and decided to trace the whole circuit to establish what went where and how the mirrors actually move.

By coincidence, I had a SAAB 9000 manual lying around, and it transpired that the circuit configuration is exactly the same. This suggests that the components used are common to quite a few other vehicles, so locating a suitable replacement mirror motor or joystick ought to be fairly straightforward, in the event (heaven forbid! On a TVR?!) of a failed unit.

Pod wiring		Joystick and mirror selector switch

So, how do the mirrors work? Each motor unit has, in fact, only one motor. This drives a simple rack-and-pinion to effect one axis of movement. There’s also a solenoid in there, that pulls the motor pinion from one rack to another, thereby providing two axes of movement using only one motor. Cheap, but simple.

Of course if the motor fails you lose both axes; this is also true if you have, say, a broken wire feeding the motor.

With the rocker switch in the centre position, power cannot reach the motors, but you’ve probably noticed that if you move the joystick one way or another you can hear some clicks from the mirrors. This is the solenoids moving the pinions back and forth.

The really clever bit is the joystick (see the circuit diagram), which incorporates three switches. It activates the motors and the solenoids in the appropriate combinations to produce the required movement. No relays are used, so faultfinding is simplified to the rocker switch, the joystick and the mirror motor units themselves.

The motor units have push-on connectors that can corrode, and there’s also a multiplug in each door that may be worth a look. Oh, and don’t forget there’s a fuse in the car somewhere…..!

I’m not going to state categorically that only one make of motor units was used, or that they can be found on such-and-such a car in the breaker’s yard. Suffice to say that ‘it’s not rocket science’ and a bit of detective work should resurrect even the most terminally duff mirrors.

You may well find, even if you’re brave enough to attempt dismantling of the motor units, that they’re glued together, so will take some care to open without damage. It’s doubtful that you’d be able to repair anything that could break in there anyway!

Have fun!

Ian

Thanks to Ian Sayer for submitting this article.