Hiya,

Now the icy weather has begun, has anyone used their heated wing mirrors?

I can hear a relay switching when I turn the mirror knob thing. But can't tell if my heated wing mirrors do anything.

Should the glass feel warm to the touch? Do they take forever to de-mist/ice?

Thanks if you can help me find out if mine are broken.

Justy

I usually use them also when it's raining - 5 minutes and the water drops on them are gone. And they should feel warm when you touch them, just like the praking sensors.

mine take less than 30 seconds, have you got the switch in the position to heat, mine is at about 2 o'clock position.

 

John

Mine works pretty well, 2 minutes max and the ice is gone. My only concern is the knob looks broken when turning from neutral position to heating mode  :|

Edited 3 January, 20179 yr by yankarinRG

Mine works pretty well, 2 minutes max and the ice is gone. My only concern is the knob looks broken when turning from neutral position to heating mode  :|

Yeah I also think the switch is broken in that position. Feels odd doesn't it.

I think I'll have to pop to a Skoda dealer and ask to touch some wing mirrors.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Mine cleared the ice off pretty quickly last night. There was ice on the rear screen and the mirrors, and the mirrors were useable before the rear screen had cleared! But I was parked nose in against a wall, so there was a lot less ice on the mirrors than the rear screen. 

Mine work fine as have the heated mirrors in my other 3 Fabias.  Ice gone within a couple of minutes max.  Get them checked under warranty.

The heated mirrors should work well and fairly quickly. Mine do. They not only get rid of ice, but rain drops too quite quickly.

I don't know about current Fabias, but a long time ago, I left the heaters switched on in my almost new at that time 2000 VW Passat - that ended with me needing to buy two new heated mirror glasses, lesson learned, coming from a VX Cav GSI, I trusted that VW did things the same way as VX had done, ie mirror heaters only work if switched on while heated rear window was on, that was my mistake!  Found wife's previous Polo with its switch in the wrong position and her new Polo as well, but so far no more failed mirror heaters, so maybe caught them in time are VW group now use a different power strategy??

On our 7 year old Fabia and 5 year old Yeti they were switched on on day one and left on since then.  All still working with no problems.

Maybe Skoda use a better way of doing things than VW did back in 2000 on that old A4 based kit of bits!

 

Edit:- the way that I discovered that VW controlled the mirror heaters differently than I had expected, was by reading about it in a USA VW Passat forum - I hoped that it was just "interweb waffle" - unfortunately was turned out to be true, though I did sort things before I needed to use them in the next winter.

 

Everyone else shouted "rubbish" - which just probably meant that they did not run a B5 Passat.

Edited 3 January, 20179 yr by rum4mo

With the Mk2 Fabia you could do the change so that the Heated Mirrors come on with the Heated Rear screen if switched on.

 

?

Has nobody done this with their Mk3?

Have you checked the fuse, if there is one just for the heated mirrors?

My heated mirrors stay on for 20 mins then shut off automatically. They do of course switch themselves back on when you restart the car IF you don' turn off the switch that controls them. I think this can be changed as Offski says but it works well for me as it is. 

Yeah I also think the switch is broken in that position. Feels odd doesn't it.

I think I'll have to pop to a Skoda dealer and ask to touch some wing mirrors.

Thanks everyone for your help.

 

Mine has the same odd feel and quite stiff to get the switch past the point for adjusting the mirrors.  I usually turn it to the left and it flops about at 8/9 o'clock but it certainly works OK

On my old Skoda on a 55 plate the switch had a much more positive feel when set to defrost the mirrors  Joe

I think the 'odd' feel to the switch is a feature of the standard VAG switch, my Touran's feels exactly the same, both cars work the same the mirrors only heat up when the heated rear screen is switched on, that is on a timer and automatically switches off after about 10 minutes. The timer setting can be adjusted via VCDS. As far as I can see on our Mk 3 the heated mirrors are permanently linked to the rear screen heater switch. The mirror glass does eventually feel warm but it takes quite a few minutes.

 

I leave the mirror switch in the heated position all the time.

Well, this is embarrassing!!!

 

Got the car booked in for a check but thought best to check the fuses; as I'd wired in a dashcam almost a year ago.

 

The fuse for the heated mirrors (fuse 51) was missing! My dashcam hardwire had mysteriously moved from position 51 to 52.

 

Either I've pulled that out for a quick check a few months ago, and put it back in the wrong place, or a tech did the same thing one cold/dark night, trying to fix an electric window.

 

I think I'd err on the side of it being me.

 

All now works! You can definitely feel they're warm within a couple minutes.

 

P.S. I didn't even know the car had heated mirrors until a few weeks ago!

Edited 4 January, 20179 yr by Osmosis

Glad you found the problem! Thanks for letting us all know. 

The switch interests me as I left today a post on the Roomster forum about the switch dial being floppy after selecting a function. Is this right?

The O, L & R positions are usually quite firm, the switch usually clicks and aligns onto those positions, but the heated mirror position is very vague  on all the VAG group cars I drive on a regular basis (Touran-2013, Fabia -2015, and Octavia -2006), the heated symbol is about the 10 oclock position but the mark on the switch is around the 9 oclock position and it doesn't click into position.

My switch works ok then. As you say the heated position the pointer goes past the heating icon. When clicking off the heating the pointer aligns with the R symbol. The switch does feel flimsy