Side view mirrors have stopped working

Hi everyone,

We got a surprise today. My wife jumped in our 2008 Prius and tried to adjust the side view mirrors before leaving the driveway... but they both are not working. They won't do anything! I just went out and had a look and everything else seems to be fine, it's just the mirrors - the windows work, the locks work, even the defrost feature of the mirrors work (turned on defrost and could feel the heat behind the glass).

I checked in the fuse diagram in the manual, but there does not seem to be any that relate directly to the mirrors. I pulled any that seemed like they "could" be related such #3 for defrost (the mirrors have defrost), or #18 for the windows (the controls are very close to each other), but the fuses were all fine.

Any thoughts on if this is a fuse issue or not? And if it's not the fuse, what else could be causing this to happen.

Thanks in advance.
Troy

 

Hi adamace1,

Do you mean the mirror control switches? If so, I'm not really sure. I played around with them a lot, switching between Left and Right many times. And I tried moving the direction button around in different ways, to see if it was some kind of connection problem within the control switches. But all of this has no effect at all. If not a fuse, I guess it's possible that the whole thing has become disconnected. Although, I've never taken the door apart, so I'm not sure if this is even possible.

Troy

 

Do you know if there are other things also connected to the ACC fuse? Like I said, everything else seems to be working fine.

Either way, I'll take a look at the ACC fuse in the morning.

Thanks!

 

Thanks andyprius.
I'll take a look at that in the morning too. However, I would expect that situation to affect one mirror, while the other one to remains working fine. It seems like it would be quite a coincidence for it to happen to both mirrors at the same time. Also, if the mirror was "trying" to move, I assume that I would hear some sort of noise like a little hum or whine as the mirror attempted to move. In my case the mirrors do not seem to be making any attempt at all.

 

Hi vertex,
It's hard to check fuses in the dark, but checking to see if the clock works is pretty easy. I just went out and the clock is indeed working. So luck us, sounds like it's something more involved than simply changing a fuse! I'm due for maintenance and I'm hoping to get it in this Friday - so I'll have them track this down while it's in. I'll keep you posted.
Troy

 

Had the car in for regular maintenance yesterday. The answer to the problem--the control buttons on the driver's door were disconnected. So they either worked themselves free, or (more likely) the body work we had done a few weeks ago was the cause. I didn't think that they would have dismantled the door (they were fixing a large chip by the driver's side wheel well) to do the painting that needed to be done--but it looks like they must have.

Thanks everyone for your input.
Troy