I did some searching and couldnt find this exact issue. Basically my car came with the lighted mirror. Since 2005 when I bought the car, the lights in it never worked and I never bothered to replace the bulbs. I recently found a 92 lumina in a junkyard with a perfect lighted mirror. To my surprise, it is the exact same mirror in my car to a tee. The numbers and everything stamped on it are the same. So I went to plug it in and wolla! The lights turned on! However... The wont turn off... The dome light works, and turns off when the door is shut, but the map lights stay on. I thought maybe they take awhile to dim off like the newer cars... Nope. Still on 30 mins later when I came back to check. Any ideas? Could the mirror be different? Concern with my wiring? Thanks for any ideas!

 

Ok... so i decided to try putting bulbs in my old one just to see what would happen. Well the lights came on when the door was open and sure enough they went off when the door shut. This now leads me to beleive the lumina mirror has a swapped lead in the wiring inside the mirror which would keep it on all the time. Must have been a suttle change in models or something. With the Lumina mirror being nicer, I removed the lenses and hardware from that mirror and swapped it over to mine effectively making mine the nice one. Project complete. Keep this in mind when grabbing a part from a similar year chevy!

 

Most of the newer ones seem to have different wiring/plugs than the third generation cars do. My 1992 Formula has a 3 wire lighted mirror while the others I've found have 4.

 

Thats whats odd about this one. It was from a 92 Lumina and was identical exactly to the one I had in my car already including the 3 wire harness. There just must be something mildly different about it.

 

I'll check Luminas then. The mirror in my car has some imperfections in the glass. I'm not sure why. I have no idea why anyone would touch the mirror that much or how they could accidentally scratch/damage the reflective surface.

 

leave it to GM to never make a "universal" part. I mean jeez

 

Yep. GM Engineers love to change things.

 

Can anyone point me to instructions on how to add a lighted mirror to a model that didn't come with the wiring? Maybe it's simple, I don't know. I'm new at this and couldn't find it anywhere on the forums through a search. Thanks.

 

You just need to pull the wiring out of the donor car. It ties in with the power distribution box. You just have to run the wire up through the A-pillar plastics and under the front of the headliner.

 

Hmmmm....easy for YOU to say! LOL Ok, I'll keep that in mind, Thanks

 

Its not as hard to do as it sounds.

 

I added 4th gen mirrors to both my 86 Trans Am and my 88 Formula.
I ran the wires down the a pillar to the fuse panel area and spliced one wire to constant 12V and the other was spliced into the wire for the footwell light, the ground wire went to ground.
This way the mirrors come on with the door or light switch as well as turning on anytime I use the switches on the mirror.

I replaced all the courtesy lights with LED's, gives it a nice white look. Will take some pics tonight when it gets dark.