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Re the self-dimming mirror: No, you don't have to do any modifications. The SDM will fit perfectly in place of the older mirror. It is truly a God's send to have one. Really lessens the eye strain. Wish they had it for the side mirrors as well, but they don't.
Re installation: Remove the plastic strip running up the corner post and above the driver's door. It pulls loose EXCEPT for a screw holding the end in above the seat belt. To get at the screw you will have to pry or squeeze loose (carefully) the plastic surround covering the seat belt and it will come out. You don't have to take it off, just pull it back far enough to get at the screw holding the other piece of plastic trim. Once the plastic window trim is out of the way you will have a challenging job threading the wires from the mirror down under the dash at the base of the corner post. With the mirror removed you can slip or thread the wires under the headliner over to the window and down the window post. It was getting them through to the under dash compartment that was frustrating. I tried for half an hour using a separate wire. After lying on my back a dozen times and looking under the windshield corner post where I thought the wire would come out, I gave up and used a stiffer piece of wire and finally found the end of it.
Once you've pulled the wires through to the underside of the dash, you are ready to hook up. You will have three wires, if I recall (it's been two and half years since I did the job)--one brown or orange/brown, one black and one blue (I think, or yellow). Brown is the power, black the ground. That leaves the third which I recollect as being blue or yellow. The brown and black wires will match up with the same colored wires in the yellow auxillary power connector. There are numerous wires to the auxilliary connector, but just connect to the two of the same color. I don't think hooking your fog lights to this connector will interfere with the operation of your mirror. The orange/brown in the auxilliary connector is the one you want to connect your brown wire to. And black goes to black. The third wire connects to a blue wire coming from one of the three banks of color-coded wire modules you will see when you're lying on your back looking up under the dash. There are three banks of modules--yellow, white and red. It's the red bank you want. Within the red bank are small banks of connectors, and the one you want there is also red. There will be an empty slot beside it. It will have about ten wires coming from it, but the one you want is a heavy solid blue wire. I vaguely remember the blue wire coming from as being heavier than the other wires in that connector. This heavy blue wire goes to your backup lights, and when you hook the third wire from the mirror into this wire using one of the squeeze together fastners, it will turn off your mirror. Without it, when you put the car in reverse, the mirror will read the backup lights when they come on as someone coming up on you and will dim. This isn't a biggy, but I took the time and trouble to locate the wire and connected to it. I put the mirror on my 97 wagon, which is in Norway, but checked on a friends 96 to refresh my memory. I hope the wiring is the same. Should be, but Volvo is forever changing things as the cars go down the assembly line. The schematic diagram I got from the Volvo shop to identify the blue backup wire in the red connector was not in the row of connectors it should have been. I had to read that sheet a dozen times before I realized it was for an English, right hand drive. For some obscure reason Volvo moved the red connector on the American model over to the red module. On the diagram it showed it in the yellow module as I recall. So much for gripping details.
After installing the self-dimming mirror you might want to think about the backup warning radar on your back bumper. This has saved me three times already. The kit is expensive and it will take you half a day and a good bottle of wine to do the job properly. I bought my kit several years ago for around 180 from Houston Volvo (1-800-468-0041) which had the cheapest parts at the time, but I think it is considerably more today. You might want to check there if you haven't bought your mirror already. I think I paid around eighty or ninety for my mirror at the time.
Let me know how the job turns out. And if you have more questions, don't hesitate to write.
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