Justin: The Raxiom Directional Sideview Mirrors that we have here will appeal to the '05 to '09
Mustang owners who might be looking to add a little bit more customization along with a
bit more safety at the same time. Now, the mirrors will be sold in sets of two and will include brand
new ABS housings, along with the bright amber turn signals and wiring all for right around 150 bucks
for the pair. Site's gonna call this a strong one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter and
a couple of hours to complete from start to finish. But I think the job's a little
bit more involved than some people may expect. Either way, hang out with me
for a bit. We'll cover the lights then we'll break down that install later in the video.
So these mirrors from Raxiom continue to be a very popular mod amongst the earliest S197 crowd and,
hey, the nearly 100 or so five-star reviews tend to back that up. And as always,
if you haven't already done so, feel free to read up on those reviews and check out the
customer-submitted images on the site to get a better idea of how these things might look once
they've been installed. But getting to the mirrors themselves. The idea here is pretty simple, right?
Deliver a factory-styled mirror, but with the inclusion of a more modern turn signal on
both sides to kick up the look a little bit, but importantly, kick up that safety factor as well,
which obviously is always important to point out. Making other people more aware
of your intentions is never a bad thing and can hopefully reduce the chance of any accidents.
But outside of the added turn signals, the mirror itself is very OE or factory-like
in appearance. So if you're looking for something that just screams aftermarket like a bullet-style
mirror or something like that, you are in the wrong place here with the Raxioms. However,
if you prefer the underrated factory-styled mirrors, these will certainly be right
up your alley. Now, they do ship in the standard kind of textured black.
But if you did wanna kick up the look a little a bit while getting that lighting,
you could always add the pre-painted skullcaps to match your ride or even go with a number of the
carbon fiber or different aftermarket options we have on the site. And, again, I go back to
that customer-submitted images page because a lot of guys have actually customized these
to fit their S197. And, again, it gives you a great idea what guys are actually you're doing.
But on top of the housings, you are getting a fully loaded mirror here,
meaning you're getting the new glass, of course, along with the turn signals all assembled and
all ready to go right out of the box. There's nothing to put together here. Now, of course,
we've saved the best for last, and that will be the main attraction, if you will, and that is
gonna be the functional amber LEDs built in to act as a turn signal or your hazards whenever they've
been turned on. Now, this is made possible, thanks to the five individual LEDs per side
that are extremely bright once installed and will, again, help increase that visibility when turning.
Now, again, these do tap in your factory turn signals using the included wiring
and will operate as the turn signals or, again, those hazards whenever you fire them up. Which
brings us to the installation. And, again, the site kind of sandbags this one a little bit,
guys, with that one out of three wrench reading as there is some additional wiring needed. Now,
the wiring itself isn't bad, but it's running that wire up through the door into the headlight area,
it can be a little bit time-consuming judging by the customer reviews.
But to give you a better idea of how things are gonna go down with your S197
at home, feel free to check out our detailed walkthrough and tool breakdown right now.
Man: Tools used for this install are impact driver or ratchet,
11-millimeter socket, 7-millimeter socket, T30 Torx bit, small pocket screwdriver,
needle nose pliers, plastic trim tool, and a panel removal tool. All right, guys. So for this
install, your interior door panel is going to have to come off. And since there's a little bit of
wiring involved, there's a couple of other smaller interior panels that will also have to come off.
I'm gonna walk you through the whole process. Let's get started. So first, I'm gonna pull
off this interior piece right behind the mirror. I can use my hands for this one.
If it's a little tight for you, you might need to use an interior trim tool, but then once you have
it off, you can just go ahead and unplug it, and then we'll move on to the rest of the door panel.
The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull my door handle release back and pull this little
cover panel that's going on in behind it, and I'm just gonna try and pry that out carefully.
And that's gonna expose a T30 Torx bit screw that I'm gonna also have to remove.
Now you just take your T30 Torx screw and pull that out,
set the hardware aside. The next piece that has to come out is going to be your window control
unit here on the side of the door panel. And we're just gonna get in here with our trim tool.
Now I can unplug that from the back. With the window control panel pulled off, you can see a
7-millimeter headed screw right here. So I'm gonna take my 7-mill socket and just pull that out.
And next thing I'm gonna do is take out all of the 7-millimeter screws that are
located all around the outside of the door panel. So once, again,
with my seven mill socket, I'll just pull those out.
So back here behind the door handle pole, there's
another panel you'll have to remove. So I'm gonna take my trim tool again
and pop that out. That's gonna reveal the T30 Torx bit screw that I also have to remove.
So I've got all the hardware removed from the door panel. Now I need to remove the
door panel from the car. I'm gonna pull up to get it to clear and disconnect
everything from behind it. So now I can unplug my connectors at the back here
and I have to unhook my door panel. Now I'm just
gonna use a pair of needle-nose pliers to depress the tabs on the door handle cable
so I can get the tab to pull out and then I can unhook the cable from the handle.
Once you have that released, just pull that back,
unhook the cable, and the whole door panel comes off.
Next, I'm gonna unbolt the three 11-millimeter nuts here at the top that hold the mirror to
the vehicle, as well as unplugging the connector that supplies power it.
At this point, I can bolt my new mirror into place and use the factory hardware to keep it down.
Make sure to fish your wire harness through, that's gonna be for your turn signals and your
corner light. And then once again, using the factory hardware, I'll just reinstall those and
then I can tighten them down with my 11-mil.
Now, this connector is gonna be reused, however, there is another wire harness that I'm gonna
have to run power for. And I'm actually gonna run that through the door into the interior
and hook that into the wire harness that runs along the doorsill. The next thing I'm gonna
need to do is actually gonna be the most fun part of this entire install, is to run the wire from
the door to the interior of the vehicle. I'm actually gonna do it a little bit in reverse.
I'm gonna run the wire from the interior of the vehicle where I need to tap it in through into
the door panel. So what I'll do first is remove my kick panel here on the doorsill, as well
as this panel down here at the bottom and that should expose the wires I need to hook it into.
So the instructions for this product tell you that you need to pass your wire harness for your lights
through the wire harness for the door, through this loom here into the cab. Now, in our case,
that's gonna be physically impossible because on the end of this loom there is a connector that
does not allow you to pass anything through it at all. So our workaround for this situation is we
are going to connect our wire harness here at the mirror and then run it along the weatherstripping
at the door into the weatherstripping for the cab and down along the doorsill behind the dash. Then
we can get to our wire harness along here at the doorsill and make our connection for our lights.
So I'm gonna start by passing my wire harness down through this weatherstripping here
till it comes out on the other side.
I'll make the connection just so I don't lose it. And then I'm gonna wanna pass it through
this weatherstripping here on the cab side. In order to keep it a little bit more secure,
I'm gonna use my clip tool to pop out the retaining clip,
and then I can pass my harness through here.
I wanna get it up over this clip so it stays in place when I have it on the car.
Make sure to keep a little bit of slack in between the door and the car.
So now that I have it hooked here behind this grommet, I can just pass it down along
this door channel and run it to the wire harness that's here at the sill.
Now I just need to find the wires here in the harness that I need to make my connections
and tap into them. So now that the wire is routed down here to the doorsill,
we're gonna try and locate the wires that we need to tap into. You're gonna wanna find the
white wire with the red tracer for your power and the black wire here in the harness for
your ground. And then you're just gonna use the supplied clips to tap into those wires.
Now we can tuck all of our wires away and put our interior pieces back together.
Now that we have all the connections made, the wire harnesses routed,
we can start reassembling our interior, and that's pretty much just gonna go in
the reverse order of removal. So I'll just start throwing the pieces back in.
Now we're ready to reinstall our door panel. So I'm just gonna plug everything back in, reattach
my door latch mechanism, and then I can install it back into place with all the factory screws.
So now that I have my door panel sitting in place,
I can reinstall all the factory hardware using all the same tools I used to remove them. And
just remember, for the screws around the outer edge of the door panel,
I'm using a 7-millimeter socket.
Now I can reinstall my window control switch and all of my cover panels.
And finally, we can reinstall our mirror control.
So now that you've wrapped up everything on the driver's side of the vehicle,
you're gonna wanna repeat the same exact process on the passenger side.
And that's gonna wrap up this review and install of the Raxiom Sideview Mirrors
that fit your 2005 to 2009 Mustang. Thanks for watching. And for all things Mustang,
keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.