Newbie Here....wife just surprised me with 2011 F250 Lariat with the 6.7L.

Anyone ever thought of having the Telescopic Side View Mirrors open/close when you use the remote to lock/unlock your truck. If so, how did you do it?

I always forget to close mine when I get out and thought this would be a great project.

 

Great idea!!!

 

Good idea, but consider the duty cycle those mirror motors are designed for. I bet they would die pretty quickly.

 

Good call. I'm sure the motor driving the mirrors is probably not rated for that much use.

 

I must have married wrong. The only thing my wife has ever surprised me with is a positive pregnancy test .

Maybe if I show her this thread she will get some ideas for Christmas...

 

does ur wife have a sister ???

dam...

 

This a good one!!!

 

the duty cycle would never be more than 2 per minute or so, but since duty cycle is measured in cycles per 10 minutes, i'd have to say its not a concern.


find the relay or wire that is required to fold in the mirrors
find the wire that flashes the lights, horn, or controls the door actuators.

tap into the wire for the locks, lights ect.
take this to the power mirror wire.

use this circuit
http://www.the12volt.com/installbay/...lay_simple.gif
to give about 2 seconds of power going to the folding wire even with only a short pulse to the door lock actuators.

the 1N4002 is a simple diode
the 2N3005 is a NPN transistor

modify the capacitor to get more or less time delay


edit:
heres another option
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B000NKE8YQ

it would take a bit more fiddling and is more complex of a circuit

 

I just told my wife some of your responses and she was cracking up. Thanks for the humor!

 

Thanks Gordon O - you've convinced me to pursue this project. I'll update everyone once it's complete.

 

;-)

give it a try, the worst that can happen is that the circuit doesnt work.
you could also try using another relay and a 555 timer.
there are literally thousands of ways to accomplish it.

basically, you have a "signal" coming from the door lock actuator
this is a pulse that only lasts about 1/2 a second
obviously you cant just connect this to the mirror folding motor or it would only fold in for 1/2 a second.

figure out how long it takes to fold the mirrors in, then multiply by 1.2 to 1.3
this will give you a safety factor if its cold out or something so your mirrors dont get stuck halfway.

now construct a time delay off circuit to keep power to the mirrors for the length of time required to fold the mirrrors in.

if it were me, i'd use the door lock actuator because there are probably two wires going to the actuator. one to lock, one to unlock. whereas the lights only blink. this way you can make two timer circuits and have the mirrors auto open when you unlock the doors.

hopefully ford built limit switches into the mirrors so that if you hit the unlock button when the doors are already unlocked you wont stress the folding motor out.
you may want to research this some, but i cannot imagine that they overlooked the possibility that someone might accidentally hold the folding mirror button down.

keep us updated.

 

in case its not obvious, i would bench test the circuit thoroughly before installing it.
if you are paranoid, use a water resistant box to enclose the circuitry and plug in connectors to keep water and mice out

Project Boxes | AllElectronics.com
here are some boxes, some even have mounting flanges for mounting it under the hood or dash or whatever.

 

Where did you pull that magical 10 minute spec out of? Duty cycle can be measured over any length of time, it is just on time divided by total time. I guarantee you, if you cycle your mirrors every time you lock/unlock your truck, you'll be buying new mirrors within a few years. The door locks are designed to cycle a lot, and they still wear out, the power fold motors are not designed for that type of use.

 

10 mins is a pretty normal length of time to use for a duty cycle %, it's easy to put percentages into minutes without thinking about it. All my welders are spec'd on 10 min duty cycles in the manuals, but it's just an arbitrary length so you don't have to think about converting. I don't know where he pulled the 2 min number out of, but out of that he's deriving a 20% dc on the motors. I think you're looking more at the total number of cycles the motors can handle, and not how frequently they can do it. I'm on your side, running them significantly more times than an average user will wear out something in the system sooner, even if the motors themselves never exceed their duty cycle inside a period of time.

 

LOL. or get your computer taken away hahaha