Using my mirror in a rentacar

micky · 2016-12-17T04:33:41+00:00

I have a long foreign trip planned starting in March and plan to rent a car, maybe a Kia Picante (I think it is) or a Mazda 2. I will have a phone with maps, most days (If I know where I'm going the night before and take the time to dl the proper map) and I may have paper maps of much of the area (I really prefer paper maps.) but there will be times when I'm just wandering around, on roads that wind and have barely any relationship to north, south, east or west. I just installed a rear view mirror with a compass in my own car, and it's great. I've used the sun or the shadow of telephone poles and speed limit signs to navigate in the past, but that's really hard when it's anywhere near noon, or when it's overcast. The rentacar will probably be this year's model or last year's, and I think they will be too cheap to have a compass, but they may have a electically self-dimming mirror... Do you think even these little cars will? So I wonder what you think about the idea of taking my rear view mirror with me on this trip, and changing the mirror for my own until I return the car?? Likely to work? I don't see how I can get in trouble, right? Is a cheap, small Japanese car likely to have an electric mirror. (used for self-dimming) I planned to take a hand compass, but that might mean stopping and getting out of the car each time I want to check direction. My own car doesn't have the standard 6 pin connector which iiuc late model cars have for the rear view mirror. But it was easy enough to figure out which 3 of the 6 pins on the compass/mirror were needed** and make my own adapter to fit my two pin connector, an adapter that I can take with me. It has two wires that are stripped, twisted, and soldered so that I can insert them in the 2-pin socket that is meant for the mirror. Won't the rentacar have either a 2-pin socket like mine, or a 6-pin socket that will just plug into my mirror without any adapter? These things are standardized aren't they? I...

Dec 17, 2016 41 Replies

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clare 9 years ago

Definitely the cheapest option at $12 if you can find one in stock.

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clare 9 years ago

A lot of the OEM mirror compasses are just displays, with the actual compass in the BCM computer.

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