Non-Lit Power Window/Door Lock Switches

I don't disagree with you. Every company has their reasons for the cuts here and there. I guess so long as it help Mazda remain stable and profitable, I'll take the good with the bad.

Look at what the Mazda6 owners are faced with. Can you imagine buying that car in the daylight and then at night only one switch lights up? I can imagine how many people took that back to the dealership saying it was broke...yikes!

Alright Guys. This is not going to be easy -- but I guess if it were gonna be easy, someone would've done it already.

Here's what the circuit boards look like. M3 on the bottom, M6 on the top. I haven't tried it, but you can see that there's much more complicated circuitry on the M6 board. There's only one LED integrated into both boards.

You'll see the M6 board has all 4 silver contact slabs for the autodown feature. the M3 board only has one contact slab, the other 3 are true switches. So w/o even wasting my time, I highly doubt the M6 board will work because of the more complicated circuitry and what I'm sure is, the need for a different wiring harness

So step two was to pry the actual toggle switches off. It was quite easy, but I didn't find what I was hoping to find. The M6 has all four window switches with the long stem toggle switch (on the top in the pic), and the M3 has 3 short stem toggle switches to make use of the actual switches in the circuit board. And the M3 has 1 long stem toggle switch to take advantage of the auto down feature.

The long stem toggle switch for the M3 is identical to the ones for the M6.

The long stem switch has the translucent "light window" integrated in all switches. It's baked in during the manufacturing process -- it ain't coming out.

So time for mission impossible: create 1/4" guide holes on both switches, dremel off the stems, prep the surface and feed a 1/2" #6 machine screw through to mount the short stem to the switch with the translucent "light window"? Crazy right? I know...

But for you nay sayers, I've already done one switch and it works perfect. but it ain't for the faint of heart. This takes time, patience, and the proper balance between gentle and forceful as to not break anything. The M6 switch also requires some grinding on the corners to allow for the same kind of travel that the M3 switches have.

Stay tuned...more to come... for now, I'm gonna go play with my daughter.

And by guide holes, I mean drilling through the back of the toggle switch. The bottom right is complete. You'll see what I mean (pics below, sideways, again...) The head of the screw is covered up by the trim in the car. You'll never even know it's there. Bottom left stock switch is my "comparison" switch so I can make sure the modified switch as the same, feel, feedback, travel, etc -- which it does. You'd never know it was modified.

There you are gents and ladies - transplant complete

I gotta be honest guys, I'm impressed with myself. There is nothing actually "technical" about this transplant. Just a lot of patience, precision, do, undo, attention to detail, and time. Took me all day. The whole panel is re-installed in the Mazda. All windows work as intended with OEM look and feel.

I haven't done the LEDs yet. I ordered 4000k surface mount LEDs and I can tell immediately they're not going to match the interior "white" lighting. There's a slight tinge of yellow to it, and that's not ok with me. I have the same type of LEDs ordered in 6000k and that should be a much better match. I'll be seeing those on Wednesday of this week, but I don't expect to have time to install them until next weekend. Then I've gotta get the passenger side lit up. That'll be a small one-button transplant. Should be pretty simple.

I'm certain most of you who are confident in your DIY skills will be interested in doing something like this. This is going to be a hell of a step-by-step process and I gotta think through how I'd document it. Again, it's not hard, it just takes precision, patience, and time. I transplanted 3 buttons and honestly the first one was just dumb luck, worked like a charm. The second one was a beast -- but I think I know what I did wrong which was a decision to place the guide hole dead center, and that ended up causing me heartache. I eventually got it, but took some supreme patience. The last one was easy as pie because I knew where to place the guide hole. The guide hole is the key to the whole thing. The stem can't be too shallow or too deep. It can't be too far left, or too far right. It's pretty much gotta be perfectly set. And when you see how I did it, you're gonna be like "no freakin way".

That said, I'm super stoked to get the LEDs in and do the passenger side. It's the little things in life and the attention to detail!

johnykalbo said:

Excuse my simple-mindedness. You are transplanting the switches from M6 board to M3 board, the transplant will give the 3 all four auto up down functionality. Then next week you will be adding the lighting, so in the end all power all lighted? Thanks for taking the time to detail the work involved. Hope the parts needed will be easily available and not too expensive. Cheers.

Click to expand...

Hi @johnykalbo

Not a simple-minded question at all, in fact, it's a good one. This will not give the auto down feature to all of the windows on the M3. The auto down feature is much more complicated and technical than a simple button. The pic below, you'll see the two circuit boards: note how the M6 board has 4 low-profile silver slabs on it (on top of pic). Those silver "slabs" are the actual switch that allows auto down to work. However, Just having those "slabs" won't magically give you auto down. The M3 only has one of those "slabs", the other 3 are just simple switch designs (bottom of pic).

I can imagine you'd need the following: additional wiring so the master panel could "speak" to the other windows, different window motors for the auto down windows (this I'm not so sure of after looking at the design though), and then you'd need similar circuit board swaps for all of the windows that passengers would control.

All in all, I do think it'd be possible, but it'd be a super complicated job. Nothing that requires re-engineering, but there'd be some in depth swapping of parts and running wires. And even after you get all of that done, who knows if it'd actually work...

EDIT: Additionally, look at how much more complicated the engineering is on the M6 board. And ironically, the engineering exists to add 3 more LEDs for the window switches and 1 LED for the lock/unlock. However, even after all the complicated engineering for the M6 board, they STILL only included 1 LED on the board. I just don't know if I can understand the reasoning for that. At first I though it must have been manufacturing cost related, and then I saw the complication of the M6 board and I was like, there has to be a more technical reason for only included 1 LED. the engineering is all there...

@Studum

You twisted my arm! I can confirm the boards are the exact same in size, and the pin connectors utilize a 12-pin setup for both. The wiring should essentially plug 'n play.

"well why didn't you check??" haha. I try not to take my car apart until I know I have a reason to. I bought M3 and M6 donor panels so I wouldn't need to take my car apart in the event this project just ended up not working. Once I got the new M3 panel assembled with the transplant switches, I then took my car apart knowing I had something to swap in there; and by that time, the M6 panel's switches ceased to exist as they were transplanted.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there -- just the reason as to why I never got around to checking. The fact that I know this transplant works, I've since order ANOTHER M6 and M3 donor panel (at another $100) and those should be delivered next Monday or Tuesday (a week from now -- I went with the free shipping this time to keep it as cheap as possible haha). As soon as I get the new M6 donor panel it'll take me literally 3 minutes to pop out the current panel in my car and plug in the M6 panel and test it. If It works, then holy crap I wasted an entire weekend for nothing; but if it doesn't work, then at least we'll know.

If it ends up not working, I'm going to use these new M3 and M6 donor panels to document the process, give you guys a parts list, and estimated price tag.

A word on the auto-down feature and why Studum's inquiry may prove valid: when using the M3 panel, if I unplug the circuit board from my car, and then replug it in, the auto-down feature actually ceases to work (kind of freaked me out the first time...oh no, what did I do?!). However, you actually have to "program" the auto-down feature into the circuit board -- at least I presume it's the circuit board. To do this, you hold the auto-down switch all the way down, let the window go down completely and hold for an additional 3 seconds (same thing with the auto-up). After you do that, the auto-down/up feature works. So to Studum's point, if the M6 board has this capability, why wouldn't it just be plug and play? Man...in a perfect world, it would work. The passengers wouldn't have the functionality, but if the master switch board is controlling it, theoretically the driver should have the capability of this function if it all runs off of the circuit board (which would also explain the crazy price differences between the M3 and M6 panel).

I think we all believe the motors have something do to with it, and I'm not so sure the motors have anything to do with it. The difference in the motor may simply be a mechanism that allows it sense if something is in the way when using the auto-up feature. We'll find out in good time.

Who's excited?!

And btw. They're all lit up. The pic looks to have a green tinge, but they're not green - they are lit white. I should've done it in a slightly dim lit area; instead, I was in the pitch black bathroom. Anyway, you get the idea!

Mazda6 Wiring Diagram:


Hopefully this link works:
2014 Mazda6 - 0912-2a Power Window System (Auto-Open/Close Function For All Windows)

I think diagrams confirms the need for a particular window motor...

I can't get the similar diagram to open for the Mazda3...grr. I am able to locate this though which is the same spec sheet for the M6 as it is the M3 (0912-5a)

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~stephen/2014wsm/workshop manual/n6d09/html/0912_5a.html

So my excitement has dwindled and I guess I won't leave work early because those harnesses aren't the same and it appears the motors required do need what they call a "hall effect switch". Which my friend google tells me it basically stops the window when an obstruction is detected, but I presume this also stops the window motor when it detects the window is fully up or down. Looks like a pretty simple system. But from what I can tell, it's not a direct swap...shame...had me all excited!

Here's the master manual for the M6 I was using in the event you want to do your own research:
http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~stephen/2014wsm/workshop manual/n6d09/_STARTHERE.html


One M6 member made this handy diagram (pic below)