tpollauf wrote:
at night is VERY dark inside the car. The headliner only has two dome lights. One in the center and one back at the rear hatch. NONE up front where the driver would sit.
That's the way it was for my 03 with a sunroof, same two dome lights, no dome light up front
tpollauf wrote:Has anybody done what I plan to do yet?
Maybe.
My 03 Vibe has a sunroof, and I wanted the lighted mirror, so I bought one, (probably off ebay). The car didn't come with any wiring for it, and the mirror didn't come with the matching cable. I was able to fabricate a connector for it, from some cable connector out of some scrap electronic thing.
My mirror had three pins in the connector, I had to figure out the pinout with a meter.
I ran three wires to the mirror, one constant +12V, one constant ground, ( I tapped constant 12V and ground from my sunroof control) and the third down the driver's side A pillar to the red with black stripe wire coming out of the dimmer switch. Might have been able to fish that third one in behind the headliner from an existing dome light instead of down to the dimmer, but since I have a sunroof, that would have not been as straightforward. Here is a pic of the back of my mirror, with the three pins labelled how I hooked them up
- mirrorlight.jpg (27.84 KiB) Viewed 4405 times
Now, the mirror lights come on with the dome lights, or if the dome lights are off, the individual mirror lights can be turned on with the switches on the bottom of the mirror. If the dimmer is set to "OFF", the mirror lights don't come on when a door is opened but they can still be turned on manually. If the dome lights are on, pressing the switch on the mirror doesn't do anything, the light stays on, except that it stays on when the dome lights go out.
Something like that might work for you, but since I don't know the provenance of my mirror, I can't be sure if my lighted mirror is the same as yours.
If you try it, it might be worth having a spare dome fuse, just in case things don't go as planned