Please excuse me if this has been asked before. I have an 04 TL and I love the fact that my sideview mirrors turn down when I put the car in reverse to parallel park. I miss this every time I try to park my S in the city. Does anyone know if this would be possible to do? Thanks.

 

how do they know the difference wether yur parallel parking or just backing up? or do they go down in reverse all the time?

 

They only tilt down when you put it in reverse. But it can be turned off and on. You might be able to retrofit it on but it will be a lot of work.

 

This has been asked several times in the past. My answer has always been the same. Unless you're able to calculate mirror position with a reasonable degree of accuracy (which wouldn't be feasible with our current setup), it will be a time-consuming retrofit.

 

^ What he said.

The problem is any mirrors that have this feature or a "driver memory" (like power seats sometimes use) have built-in postion sensors and additional wires to send that information to the much-more-complicated mirror control unit. It's hard enough to add more wires and a new control unit but adding sensors to our mirrors or replacing the mirror guts and making it fit our housings would not be an easy job. Easiest way would be wholesale replacing the mirrors, mirror controls and wiring with all the parts out of a car with that feature. But then you have mounting problems with both the mirrors and controls. I think that's where the "time-consuming retro-fit" part comes in.

 

You could wire up to a single board computer and program it yourself.

It "can" be done but it is worth it?

 

And how is this single-board computer going to get the information it needs, i.e., the position data?

 

Doesn't need it since the motor movement is linear.

It's just simple motion control, you woudn't even need an encoder so you can run open loop

 

Linear, but not guaranteed to be in any specific position. Someone could easily bump it, for example.

Assuming no one bumped it, the only way to do it without adding in position sensors or steppers is to time the up/down motion. As was stated in earlier threads, this isn't a foolproof way to go, either. The mirror will eventually hit one of the stops, so you'd have to watch the current to the motor to determine when that happened. The timing may change from day to day or over time depending upon temperature, grime, etc. That means what positions correctly one time may not be in the correct position some time down the road, requiring occasional calibrations.

It's doable, just not very practical.

 

Exactly my point

Limit switches and encoders on the current servo motors = a closed loop system that you could program. A stepper is ok for open loop but you can't home the system unless you have some sort of absolute positioning. Plus it probably already has servo motors for it's x/y axis.

BUT is it worth it? NO

Doable, yes