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Help matching wire colors for replacement rear-view dimming mirror
I picked up a replacement rear-view dimming mirror, but like most replacements it does not have the connector fitted to the bare wire leads.
The mirror has three wires, which is good news as the harness for my 97 XJR also is a three wire connection. But the colors don't match from the mirror to the wiring from my existing mirror and harness.
The wire colors coming out of the original mirror and harness are all solid white, gray and black.
The wire colors coming out of the replacement mirror are:
Solid black
A sort of solid taupe with a white stripe
A sort of solid brown with somewhat gray stripe
It's a safe bet that the two solid black wires mate up, but I'm not certain about the other two pairs although I could guess I suppose based on the white and gray stripe. The mirror appears to be by Magna and looks just like OEM. Any clue on which of the remaining two wires go together?
It sounds like your '97 XJR wiring matches the schematic from the 1996 Electrical Guide, though your mirror wire colors differ:
The White wire with the Slate tracer line (WS) comes from Fuse 14 (10A) in the Right Hand Heelboard Fuse Box. The Green wire with Brown tracer line (GN) connects with the Reverse Lamp power supplies from the Lamp Control Module and presumably undims the mirror when reverse gear is selected. The Black wire (B) is ground/earth as you concluded.
If Magna didn't include a schematic with the new mirror, it looks like you could simply experiment by connecting the WS and GN harness wires to the Taupe/White and Brown/Gray wires in either order, connect the Black wires, then test the mirror to see if it dims at night when in a forward gear, and undims at night when in reverse gear. If it works the opposite way, just swap the wires.
For comparison, here's the schematic from the 1997 Electrical Guide, showing a 4-wire mirror with an additional wire that is Purple with a Black tracer line (PB):
P.S. Magna International is a Canada-based OEM not only of Jaguar mirrors, but headlamps, oil pumps, rearview cameras, aluminum bodies, and more.
Hi Don, that's great and very helpful information. Much appreciated.
It's interesting though, the original mirror on my 97 and the 97 I just pulled the connector from in the salvage yard were both 3 wire to the mirror, although the harness side of the connector is 4 wire.
Did the X300 have auto dimming side mirrors available in some markets?
The alternative mirror that many are using to replace the OEM mirror is a Magna Donnelly 015904, which is actually for an Acura but is physically and electrically the same as for the late X300 and early 3 wire X308/X100 cars as well.
The black wire is the same as OEM, ground.
The off-white/taupe wire is the OEM white 12V constant power
The brown should then be for the reverse trigger, which mates to the OEM gray
The following thread references that the Acura mirror is often used as a replacement:
From the wiring diagrams and Jaguar Classic Parts, it also appears that dimming side/wing mirrors were also an option but that requires a different rear view mirror with a fourth wire, or perhaps you can fool the the harness with a jumper if you had this 3 wire mirror and the dimming side/wing mirrors. Not sure though.
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Last edited by al_roethlisberger; Feb 20, 2017 at 07:05 PM.
Help matching wire colors for replacement rear-view dimming mirror
