Self Dimming Mirror Install -- Help Me Plug In

[absame]

Loren, Tool Pants, thanks for your help so far. In spite of the service manager telling me it's a 5 hour job, in about an hour I had everything apart, wires ran, and back together again. So unless it takes 4 hour to connect three wires (and remove/replace the drivers seat) he's smokin' something. Anyway it's my first time under the dash of my 03 996, and I'm stumped by:

Black Orange wire: "plug wire into an unused pin of multi-pin bridge plug BS 16/2, found in position 11 of relay support 1."

and

Brown wire: "plug wire into an unused pin of multi-pin bridge plug BS 11, found in position 28 of relay support 1."

I wont even ask why a simple mirror needs to be plugged ino a ..., rather than to any hot and ground leads, but any assistance would ge greatly appreciated. Actually, is there any functionality coming from the car to somehow control the mirror, or is this just Porsche's way of saying connect to power and ground?

Andrew

03 C4 Cab

[Loren]

Yes, BS 16/2 (position 11 relay support 1) goes to fuse F5 and is power.

And yes, BS 11 (position 28 relay support 1) goes to fuse F5 and is ground.

Not that it uses a lot of power (I doubt it does) but they are seeing the the power is distributed so you don't blow a fuse. ;)

Good Luck!

[absame]

I dont know what or where a BS1 16/2 on relay support 1 is. Does anyone have a diagram or something, or should I just wire it in like a V1?

[Loren]

The relay box near your left foot well.

[absame]

Thanks -- that's great

[Tool Pants]

I had no clue when we installed the mirror in Henry's 2000 Boxster, but thank god Henry knows electrical stuff and told me where to plug in the 2 wires.

You have to remove the relay/support tray. It is held in on one side with a 10mm nut. This is it on a Boxster. You can see all the relays. Raman has his finger on one of the bridge plugs

This is the back of the relay tray. The gray things with wires going in are the bridges. You have to put the 2 terminals on the end of the wires into the correct slots per Loren's diagram.

This is inserting a terminal into the slot. This turned out not to be the correct slot as we were looking at the Boxster TSB which, unlike the 996 TSB, did not tell us that there was a wiring change in 1999. Thank god we also had the 996 TSB or we would never had figured it out. I think I will tell Porsche to update the Boxster TSB to made note of the Boxster wiring changes. :P Jeff

[absame]

Thought it might be something like that -- I got lazy and just tapped into a ground wire and jumped off a switched hot wire out of the fuse box. Removed and replaced the seat without a hitch -- I just tapped into the matching black / blue wire coming out of the computer (or whatever that thing is under the seat)-- is that right??

Hole project took about 1-1/2 hours. Hardest thing was figuring out the cryptic TSBs. Someone could make a forture translating these into english.

Thanks for all the help.

[absame]

How do I know which is the correct reverse indicator wire under the seat? Mirror worked fine before I hooked up the wire under the seat, now it wont dim. I must have messed up.

[Loren]

From the TSB:

"Disconnect all electrical plug connections and expose weld point 21 (note the several BK/BL leads for the reverse gear signal"

"Solder the BL/RE (from pin 3)to one of the existing BK/BL wires at weld point 21, under driver's seat. Insulate."

[Tool Pants]

Is it out of reverse gear.

We disconnected the alarm control unit from the floor pan to get access to all the wires. There are also wires under the carpet. Then we removed the tape in order to find the black wire with a blue stripe. There are many wires taped together.

We found the wire under the tape. The wire was not going to anything, but had a plastic cap on the end. Dig under the carpet and see what wires are hiding there. The TSB says that there are several reverse gear signal wires but we found one that was not being used - but we did not see it until we looked under the tape. Jeff

[absame]

Thanks -- I found it myself the same way, buried under tape. I guess porsche techs all know what a "weld point 21" is. Used a wiretap to tie into one of the BK/BL wires, dimming now works all the time even in reverse. Oh well. Going to leave it for now until I have a free sunday morning to futz around.

Thanks for all the help == Was a pretty easy install, but I guess I get a B since it's not working as planned/expected.

[Tool Pants]

For others, a weld point is porsche speak for 2 or more wires crimped together. A number of wires are compined by a metal crimp then covered with a plastic sleeve. Figure 1 in the TSB shows a weld point.

These are 2 of those connections in the front trunk wiring harness that goes to the horns. Jeff