wire new gentex mirror into fuse box?

Hi,

First time post here. I used to be good at wiring car stereo's 15 years ago, but am little rusty now and could use some insight.

I've gotta 2006 Pontiac G6 that came with a standard rearview mirror. I've purchased an autodimming Gentex mirror with a compass, and am looking for the best way to wire it up.

The ground wire is no problem, but I'm not sure if I can wire the power into the fuse box, or do I need to splice into a 12V wire somewhere.

The specs for the mirror are:
Operating Voltage      9.0 to 16.0 Vdc
Maximum Current      >450 milliamps

So does that mean if I ran the power wire into a 10 or 20 amp fuse it should be okay?

Thanks folks!

CC

That means it draws 0.45 amps max. I remember those having a switched and constant power wire. The radio circuit should be able to spare half an amp for switched power, and I am sure you can find another hot wire in there.

Hey thanks for your response. The mirror I got only comes with a power and a ground wire as it doesn't need constant power, so I guess I should be good! I'm gonna wire it into a fuse that controls the heated seats and sunroof, as since I don' have heated seats it should be fine.

That should work fine; those mirrors (as long as they don't have map lights) probably don't draw much current at all.

If you use a fuse tap to tap into a factory fuse for power, it's a good idea to tap into the protected side of the fuse.

That is, out of the two prongs for the fuse, one has accessory power all the time (coming from the fuse box), and the other side gets power only if a good fuse is present.

Use the side that is dead when the fuse is missing.

That way, you can take advantage of the factory fuse. If the wire going to your mirror should short out, the fuse will blow and you'll lose the use of your accessories, but nothing will get damaged.

Perfect Chris! Thank you so much for your advice. It's just what I was looking for.