2003 Ultimate Advantage mirror blew off

McDuff · 07-30-2016, 11:25 PM

Hello, from a long lost member, I saw that it has been 3 years since I logged in here. Medical stuff kept me from doing any traveling, what a hassle. But we got out a couple times this year on short trips.

This trip was to my brothers ranch in OK, he put in 5 rv spots for me and my friends, full hookups, what a guy.

Two other couples and my brother and wife in his house were there this time, we blew off hundreds of dollars in fireworks, the weekend after 4th of July. My brother had spread the word to the locals, and probably 40 people showed up, got great applause for the show. We had some good stuff, sometimes I'm amazed at how powerful the shells are that we get to play with.

Then it was time to go home:
I was driving down a state hwy in OK, and all of a sudden, this big black thing whipped onto my windshield and then whipped off to the side and was gone. My brain was still trying to decipher WTH was that thing and I looked in my mirror to see where it had gone. What the ???, I have no mirror, no arm no nothing. Dang, that was my whole mirror arm just whipped forward and then off. Talk about being confused....

Luckily there was a big shoulder and I pulled over, and then was trying to figure out how to do a u-turn with no mirror to check traffic. I had my wife grab a hand mirror and I used it to look back, not much traffic helped a lot. I u-ied and headed back to my mirror. I got there just as a nice guy and his son had stopped in their van and picked it up and brought it over to me. Pretty busted up as you would imagine and my wife just stuffed it in a compartment. I had to go about another 1/4 mile down the shoulder to get to a safe spot in between hills to be able to u-turn again.

Man, you don't realize how often you check a mirror until it's not there, and every time you look it's a shock. I was in luck in that one of my friends had lagged in leaving, so I called him and we setup a meeting spot, I stopped for gas and waited for him. I had done about 30 miles or so riding in the right lane and using my right mirror and my rear camera to keep track of traffic, it "kinda" worked, but a few times I got spooked by cars whizzing by that I hadn't seen, made for a tense ride.

It got better with my buddy behind me, he was my "mirror", and would keep me on track. Once we got on 75, we didn't have to get out of the right lane too many times, i was only running ~62-65, so most people were blowing by us. When I did come up on a real slowpoke, I'd call him and he would setup the lane change and block for me. He was behind me until my last 7-8 miles and I had already planned those out in my head and had only 1 merge that got lucky with no traffic. I was HOME! whew...

Now what? I googled my mirrors and got a few hits here, a couple with a list of salvage yards. On the 4th one I got lucky, Colaw Salvage said they had one. We traded pics, and by god it looked good, so I bought it. My brother came over yesterday and we got to comparing them. (for those who don't know, I'm in a wheelchair, so need help on a lot of things.) My first thought was I forgot to ask about the number of pins on the connector, so we started there. My mirror had a 7 pin female with all pins being populated, the new one had an empty hole for a 7th pin. @#$% So, we tore my arm apart, and found that in the middle of the arm was another connector, and they had cut the wire there. So only 6 wires were really used on both arms, and I was still in business. We ohm'ed out the wire to make sure that it was the "dead" pin.

Then we got into looking at how these arms stay on. I am not impressed. They slide down onto a dovetail fitting, and then there is one "set screw" bolt that just "pushes into" the bracket on the motorhome. There is no matching hole or anything, just this little divet place it hits, and opposing pressure holds it on. It appeared that my "set bolt" had vibrated loose enough, that it did not do it's job, and a rogue wind gust or something, hit my mirror just right to blow it off.

I don't have the new mirror on yet, had to go buy a 6mm hex head socket to fit the "set bolt" head, and I had imposed enough on my brother for the day.

I am attaching a couple pics, the back side of the mirror arm, and one of the motorhome bracket, where you can see where the bolt hits. I highly advise you to pop off the little bracket cover where they mount and check this bolt. My passenger side is moving a little too, gonna check it for sure.

Oh yeah, our convection microwave died on this trip too, I don't think she liked sitting in storage for so long. ah, the life and times....

Gormleys · 07-31-2016, 09:32 AM

What an adventure! Glad it turned out OK. Give us an update once you get the mirror back in place!

Ray,IN · 08-02-2016, 10:37 PM

Thanks for sharing your ordeal. I'll re-check my mirror bolts before our next trip. I have only done so once since buying the MH. I did have the swing adjustment bolt come loose once, the mirror vibrated all the way around till it was against the side window before I reached a pull-off.

McDuff · 08-17-2016, 01:43 PM

An update:
We tried the new mirror, it slid into place easily enough, first thing we noticed was the "bend" in the arm is a little different. Where as the passenger has about a 90 degree bend, the new one has like a 105 or so, making it not quite straight up and down, but bent backwards a little. But in looking it over, it did not appear have any damage to cause this.

Then we tried the mirror adjust buttons; unfortunately nothing. @#$% So we put the old arm back on, and all 4 directions moved the base like they should, so the coach wires are still good,whew... We hooked up a 12v power supply to small pieces of wire that fit in the female pins on the arms and found the old pins(holes) are tighter than the new ones, so maybe not making contact when in place.

We found the correct pins to make the old base move, just reverse polarity to go in the reverse direction, and then tried the new arm. The vertical adjust works, a little "jumpy" but ok, the horizontal is dead.

I am in contact with Colaw, they are looking to see if they have another one, it came with a 6 month guarantee, so hopefully no issues here. Worst case I send it back, but if I get enough discount I may try and frankenstein this one, not sure there are more out there to be found.

the saga continues...

McDuff · 08-22-2016, 07:28 PM

Does anyone know; is there a control box between the switch and the mirrors, or is it straight from switch to mirrors? Have been looking at the online wiring diagram but it doesn't really show the whole track.

We haven't pulled the switch yet, but since the mirrors work with reversing polarity, there is either 2 contacts on each "corner" of the switch, or it hits a control box.

Got issues and need to know how far I have to try and trace wiring.

mcpo · 08-22-2016, 08:06 PM

Could be the horizontal drive motor on the new arm not working ( two motors are in the drive motor assy). You could swap out the motor assy from the old mirror assy to the new one. Hopefully it attaches the same way. I had the opposite problem with my mirror adjustment and had to find another motor and modify it to work. PIA

McDuff · 08-23-2016, 08:42 AM

Thanks mcpo, I didn't explain things well;

We found a bad wire going to the horizontal motor, now up/down/left right all work correctly when we apply +12v/gnd to the pins when on the bench.

When we hung the new mirror in place things went weird. At first only vert "up" would work on both pass/driver mirrors, then nothing at all, so both sides are dead at the moment.

We had monstrous rains in the last few days, and I did not think to cover the open connector, which points up of course, and I am wondering if rain could have seeped down into something to cause this new phenomenon. Been trying to use the online wiring diagrams to follow the wires, but am missing something, can't find the connections from the switch, they just show the switch, nothing leaving it. So was hoping somebody had followed the path before.

The other thing; we had spliced the old connector onto the new mirror, as they would never connect, and I had written the left/right connects down backwards, so thought it was possible we shorted something when we hung the mirror. But the wiring diagram doesn't look like the mirrors share wires, so don't know why the pass mirror is now bunged up.

Man it is never easy...

cbeierl · 08-23-2016, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by McDuff

Thanks mcpo, I didn't explain things well;
...Been trying to use the online wiring diagrams to follow the wires, but am missing something, can't find the connections from the switch, they just show the switch, nothing leaving it. So was hoping somebody had followed the path before....

Referencing the Automotive Wiring Diagram for your coach, upper right corner of page 8 of the pdf shows actual pigtail for connection to mirrors. Those connect to plugs at D-6 and D-7 in upper left of page 2 of the pdf. These then lead to 6-pin connector at D-5. That connects to connector at location C-8 on page 8 of pdf which leads to the switch connector at D-7 on the same page.

You can refer to the Wiring Identification Guide to identify the purpose of each wire based on its label.

Hope that's helpful. I have no personal knowledge of your setup, but I may be able to help tracking down details in the wiring diagrams if you have questions.

McDuff · 08-24-2016, 09:09 AM

Thanks Chris,

Those are the pages I've been looking at, using this page as the starting point:
Table of Contents

I guess my confusion was on page 8, I wasn't seeing that the "connects to power mirrors switch" Label at D7 is "shared" between the 2 connectors shown. I was thinking the bigger conn was still going somewhere else. And the only other ref to the switch is page 7 of this pdf, and it is just a pic of the switch:
http://www.winnebagoind.com/diagram/...ire_141297.pdf

So, if that is indeed the whole mirror wiring diagram, there is no control box, and I am really confused. The rain must have shorted something out somehow, because the driver mirror works just fine on the bench, and not when installed. And the passenger mirror does not work now either, with or w/o driver side on. @#$%

Gonna go beat my head against the wall for awhile...

Thanks for the reply and getting my thinking straight.

cbeierl · 08-24-2016, 11:27 AM

Taking a look at the Front End Wiring Installation diagram for your coach, it looks like there's a relay and a 15A circuit breaker for the mirrors (see pages 3 & 4). Perhaps the breaker needs resetting? You also might try swapping in a different relay just to eliminate that as a possibility (I think there's a bunch of the same relays there).

McDuff · 08-24-2016, 11:36 AM

Yeah we've looked at them in the front driver side compartment. The breaker is not tripped.
*an aside* personal pet peeve; there is no way to make these button breakers trip. I need to remove power to the spotlight to sync the remote control on powerup. Sure would be simple if I could pop the breaker...

We pulled pretty damn hard on the relay, to the point of thinking of damage. and it did not budge. Anybody have the recipe for removing these?

But thank you for continuing to look at this.

McDuff · 11-02-2016, 05:02 PM

Ok, time for an overdue update.

We had indeed fried the switch, we took it apart and you could see where the "trace" was blown. I hunted down a new switch, and the only thing out there was the newer style where the whole top moved rather than 4 separate "buttons" like mine, but the wiring all looked the same, so I ordered a new one off of Ebay.

In the meantime, we had taken the new mirror apart enough to now see that the motors were mounted differently. The old one was set up with a motor on the the bottom and one on the side( @3&6). The new one had the motors mounted diagonally(@2&8 roughly). That was weird.

So we knew the wiring had to be different, and we ran thru all our thoughts and sketches, and we came up with the only wiring setup that would work. And there was a slight issue, the "up/down" functions were going to be reversed on the new mirror. I decided I could live with that. In downtime, I researched enough to find out that they switched mirror mfg's 4 months after my coach was built of course.

The new switch arrived, we hooked everything up, hit left/right on both, then hit the up button, annnnnd the switch let the magic smoke out. @#$%^ We took the new mirror off, and found we had skinned some wires in it when we moved it around on the bracket. rats….

Went back to Ebay and bought "the last one" of this switch, whew. When it arrived, we were really hesitant to push any buttons :-) but finally hit all the buttons and all directions moved as expected including the reversed up/down.

What an "adventure" in fixing a problem, man, it is never easy. Now I am down to why my mirrors keep wanting to slide out of position, but that is for another thread I think.

Thanks for reading, and I hope I helped someone along the way.