The car came with the plain old mirror and I want to add the auto dim. Has anyone done this on their car? Is the harness there or do I need to run a wire from under the dash?

Somebody posted about this last week in one of these forums and everybody responded that they suck and a "plain old one" works much much better. Not worth the effort. I don't know how they work but I have a couple and one sorta kinda works and the other doesn't seem to do much. They seem to turn things green though. If I stumble on some plain old ones for almost free I will most likely swap mine. Cheers.

It's kinda hard to do right. For instance, the mirror is never dimmed when the car is in Reverse. So that'd require some harnessing to the gear shifter somehow.

My first Brougham had the regular mirror and I liked it just fine. Then my second had the dimming mirror, and it was kinda weird at first, and still is. The mirror is smaller so you lose some inches of rear view from the left and right, but you can still make do. Also the mirror has a gold hue to it, which never seems completely "un-dimmed" to me, and never a bright as a plain-jane mirror. And, IMO it doesn't dim enough as a manual one does.

But I got used to it, and it's pretty nice since I'm not always flicking the button back and forth.

Greg

Get the roof harness from the same car you get the mirror from and everything should be plug and play. The electrochromic mirror on my 95 looks the same as a manual mirror in the day time and tints to green when there are bright headlights behind me at night. I find its level of dimming actually varies depending on the brightness of headlights behind me. The system works well, imo.

I had the option in my 1994 and liked it. I'm not sure if the mirror is the same. The old ones used to tilt the mirror instead of the electrochromatic system. Anyway, I was hoping to just buy one off Ebay and that the harness would be tucked under the headliner figuring they'd make it an easy add-on at the dealer.

My 89 Brougham has the auto dimming mirror, but it doesn't seem to work. The sensor will pick up light and turn on a small green light at the bottom of the mirror, but there's never any real dimming, so it must be broken.

I recall my mom's 91 Thunderbird had an auto dimming mirror that worked really good.

If yuo dont have the mirror you wont have the wiring for it either.

I see them at swap meets often for around $50 with compass. std in 95-up FW's, 94 had no compass. My 00 Buick Park Ave Ultra as one, compass only, as outside temp is on a different display so they are both up all the time. My 96 and 99 Suburbans both have the ones with outside temp and compass. Very very common. Should be easy junkyard find.

I picked up one without electrochomatic and compass/temp with dome lights under it for next to nothing.

Auto Dimming Rear View Mirror (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&sspagename=STRK%3AMESELX%3AIT&viewitem=&item=270276369458)
I just listed this one on ebay it is in excellent shape.