I have a 2012 F150 XLT SuperCrew and this weekend I completed my power fold upgrade. This is a feature I wish I had purchased. It is handy when pulling into the narrow ATM drive lane. Also, this feature is the best for automatic car washes. Here is what I have learned along the way:

There are three basic components to this system: The mirrors, the switch, and the relay.

The mirrors:

Drivers: BL3Z*17683*EA
Passenger: BL3Z*17682*EA

These should be Power Fold, Heated, Turn Signal, and AutoDim. The drivers has the convex mirror in the upper left corner and chrome mirror caps.

I would like to point out that I did not order these by part number. I found New-Take-Offs on Ebay - $450 shipped. Tasca wanted $560+ for just the drivers mirror and about $380 for the passenger (so I was stoked at the deal I got). You should confirm the features of the mirrors with your parts guy.

The switch:

7L1Z-17B676-AA $29 shipped from Tasca on Ebay.

The Relay:

The relay is around $100 but has eluded me. I cannot find where it should go or if any wiring was already in place. So I resigned to not using, though I wish I could have.

Research:

I found very little helpful information on the forums wire respect to this upgrade. I did find this thread http://www.f150forum.com/f38/folding...-98846/index2/, specifically Post 16. This would be my guide.

If you read on, you will see that there were several approaches as to how to get the wires to and fro. We are going from Pin 7 Passenger to Pin 7 Drivers and then pigtail to Pin 6 on the mirror switch plug. Then we need Pin 16 Passenger to Pin 16 Drivers and then pigtail to Pin 4 on the mirror switch plug.

I wrestled how to get these wires run, first I considered running under the door inline connector, but it's a brand new truck and I didn't want to see this. Another guy drilled out the inline connection and ran the wire through. Better, but if I ever need to pull the door off, I would have to cut and splice later. I didn't really want to do this. So, I took the path of what about adding pins. After two failed attempts to acquire the correct female and male pins from terminal suppliers, I had a thought.

This would be more expensive, but that didn't really matter if it worked. I decided to by two Ford Wiring Pigtail Kits 3U2Z-14S411-AJD and 3U2Z-14S411-DHAB. One is male, the other female. These are the connectors at the actual mirror itself so I knew this would work.

After applying my own creativity as to how to de-pin these guys, I finally go frustrated and just obliterated the connectors to get to the pre-terminated pins. I needed 4 Male (2 at each door) and 9 Green (2 at each mirror, 2 at each door and 1 for the mirror connector switch at pin 4) Here is a shot of them (Green = Female, Black = Male):



I then got to work. I got the door panels off and the inline connectors at the doors removed. Since the pins were pre-terminated I had to butt-connector the wire (14 Ga., but was a little big) I was adding (I made blue=pin 7 and white =pin 16):



I then heat-shrinked the butt-connectors and then heat-shrinked again with the heat-shrink that came with the pig tail kits. A fully prepped splice:



Next, I inserted the pins in the proper locations at the door mirror connection. Pay attention to how the pins are already there. I used the flat portion of the crimp as a guide to know which was top and which was bottom when inserting. Push them in, I had to get the needle-nose out to help get leverage on the back of the pin when inserting. Keep going, you will feel it snap into place. I then snaked the wire down the current harness to the inline connector at the door and inserted two female pins into two adjacent open pin locations I guess I should note I started with the passenger door.

I removed the fuse block to I could remove the male side of the inline connector. After splicing on two, black, male pins, I inserted them into the matching locations that I chose on the door side of the connector. In order to keep from getting confused, I used the open Pin 7 in the inline connector on both doors for Pin 7 from the mirror. This made it much easier to keep straight.

Male side of Inline connector:



I ran the wires through the dash, deciding to go high and just above the SYNC module and then back down near the OBDII port.

Much of the process was the same at the drivers except the parking brake bracket had to come off to get to the driver's, male, inline connector. I had a pin already at pin 6 on the mirror switch plug, so my guess is you will too. I just a wire tap here. Just remember that you have to have jumpers from the switch to the lines you make for the inline connector to the mirror connector. I choose to butt-connector my blue and white wire to two wires on the other side. For instance, the white (Pin 16) had a butt connector spliced with two Green female pins, one to the mirror connector and one to the mirror switch plug Pin 4. Repeat for Pin 7, but I had to splice on only one female pin (to the mirror connector) and another lead to the wire tap. I taped every thing up and time for a test.

It worked great. However, I was expecting pulling down on the switch to fold and subsequently unfold, but this is not the case. For me its down to fold and up to unfold. I suspect this is because I do not have the relay, but it actually feels natural to me, the motion of the switch matches the motion of the mirror.

I really hope this helps, I know it would have for me.

Philip

 

Wow! A lot of work. Glad it worked. That's the one feature I wish I had from the luxury package. Didn't care much about the leather. Do you happen to know what the dealer would have charged for the job?

 

it really wasn't that much work. Only a couple hours. The involved part was the research. All of the info on the net was hit or miss and no one ever responded to my posts for help.

I never quoted a dealer to do this. My guess is that they would never do it because Ford would say its not possible. I would head over to your local car audio install guys and talk to them.

 

Great work! I almost did this a few years back on my 05, but couldn't find the mirrors cheap enough. My 12 has them and it's one of my favorite features. Can't pull in the garage with folding them, it got to be a real pain on the old truck leaning over to fold the passenger mirror in.

I would rather my switch operate like yours, I was sort of expecting it should be that way instead of pull back to fold and unfold.