pg_sportwagen5
New member
- Location
- MA
- Car(s)
- 2019 Sportwagen SE
Hi Everyone,
This is my first post on here as I just bought my first VW, a 2019 Golf Sportwagen SE. I upgraded from a pretty bare-bones car (a 2011 Mazda 3), so just discovering all the bells and whistles in this vehicle, some good and some bad. One of these bells and whistles I absolutely hate : The auto-dimming interior rear view mirror.
The auto-dimming feature is working properly I believe, but they just designed this thing such that there is about a 1/2-in border along the edge of the mirror which does not dim. This may sound like an innocuous issue, but I have some light sensitivity issues and what is happening at night time is this border is causing a strobe light effect to my eye. The headlights of the vehicles behind me go in and out of this non-dimmed border going from super bright to dim, and like I said it's a strobe effect and very distracting and unpleasant to me. I tried to capture some photos of this below with arrows pointing to the non-dimming border as best I could:
What is frustrating is that I was perfectly content with my old vehicle's ordinary manual dimming rear view mirror, the kind with the little tab on the bottom that you simply flip open at night time dimming the entire mirror. Having this fancy high tech auto-dimming mirror seems to be the crux of the problem.
So what is the solution? I thought of two ideas so far:
Any thoughts, ideas, or input here is welcome. I'm sure someone else owning this vehicle has encountered this same problem and is as bothered by it as myself.
Thanks in advance!
This is my first post on here as I just bought my first VW, a 2019 Golf Sportwagen SE. I upgraded from a pretty bare-bones car (a 2011 Mazda 3), so just discovering all the bells and whistles in this vehicle, some good and some bad. One of these bells and whistles I absolutely hate : The auto-dimming interior rear view mirror.
The auto-dimming feature is working properly I believe, but they just designed this thing such that there is about a 1/2-in border along the edge of the mirror which does not dim. This may sound like an innocuous issue, but I have some light sensitivity issues and what is happening at night time is this border is causing a strobe light effect to my eye. The headlights of the vehicles behind me go in and out of this non-dimmed border going from super bright to dim, and like I said it's a strobe effect and very distracting and unpleasant to me. I tried to capture some photos of this below with arrows pointing to the non-dimming border as best I could:
What is frustrating is that I was perfectly content with my old vehicle's ordinary manual dimming rear view mirror, the kind with the little tab on the bottom that you simply flip open at night time dimming the entire mirror. Having this fancy high tech auto-dimming mirror seems to be the crux of the problem.
So what is the solution? I thought of two ideas so far:
- I would be perfectly content going back to the ordinary manual style dimming mirror if there is one compatible with this car. Perhaps the base model Golf mirror has the manual style dimming mirror and the one is compatible with my Sportwagen SE? I'm not sure if going this route would impact some other systems like the windhsield rain sensor or anything else on my model / trim?
- Purchase some glass tinting film or tape and try to carefully cut it to a shape that fits just that the exact non-dimming border of the mirror, not the main tinting portion. This sound pretty tedious to cut it to just the right shape, line it up perfectly and not look sloppy, and I'm not sure if that border serves some functional purpose which I would be disrupting by covering it up. This would also result in the reverse problem: a weird permanent darkened border around the mirror during the daylight hours, but that is the lesser of two evils to me.
Any thoughts, ideas, or input here is welcome. I'm sure someone else owning this vehicle has encountered this same problem and is as bothered by it as myself.
Thanks in advance!
