123 Electric Passenger Mirror repair

[steeleygreg]

I was having a problem with my 83 240D electric side mirror in that it went side to side, but not up and down. Various people have said, oh set it by pushing the mirror where you want it and leave it. That will work, but my goal is to restore this car for it's been in the family for the past 25 years. and I want that factory ride. I've driven POS's for most of my life so in my older age, and while I can still move around and do work, I wanted something comfortable to drive. The brakes came first and the rear springs got replaced a few months ago. Attention turned to interior of the car and I wanted to make the side mirror work by the switch. Recently my son and I took a trip which covered considerable distance and the mirror seat and mirror kept changing between my son's driving habits and mine.
Since I've already done this job, a forum member recommended that I create a thread on the subject for others would like to know. So here goes

[Diesel911]

I am not sure why Lemförder/Lemfoerder/Lemforder parts are so elusive. Sellers seem to sell one type of their part like the Motor Mounts but don't sell the Transmission Mount made by them or some of the other Parts made by Lemfoerder.

when I got Lemfoerder Flex Discs I believe I got them on Amazon.

[steeleygreg]

I did some initial research and found a nice video on mercedesxxxxxxxx.com which covered removing and repairing the manual driver side mirror on an SDL. This gave me the basis but I wanted to extend this to the passenger mirror. After studying the mirror for a few hours, I discovered how to remove glass from the mirror. Pretty simple.....Those Germans know how to make these look complicated but there not.

I bought a new switch for the original was broken and had shorted out from liquid spilt on the center console by the PO. So I installed the switch and began testing what was there. The existing mirror moved side-to-side but not up and down. I found a replacement mirror in the forum for $20.000 and bought it as a backup if something happened to the original. I removed the original from the car and started disassembling the mirror.

So, I first started with a manual mirror, and used a plastic body prybar to remove the glass from the mirror housing. The glass pivots towards the outside edge and the adjusters are toward the front. Place the prybar near the pivot point towards the outside edge.

[steeleygreg]

Once I figured the manual was pretty easy to get the glass out, lubricte the housing and hinges I decided to tackle the electric mirror. I used the same technique as the manual with removing the glass from the mirror housing.

Removing the mirror showed an electric motor which would tilt and move the glass. I connected this to the existing wiring harness to simulate how it really works in the car. The motor worked only left to right by the switch. You could hear and feel the motor click when trying to tilting the up & down from the switch.

[steeleygreg]

Since I couldn't get the original motor to go up and down, I tested the replacement mirror that I had. After connecting it to the wiring harness, it worked perfectly in all movements. Seemed a little slow but it still worked (binding sound). So this is where I did the surgery. I wasn't going to use the second mirror housing for it was cracked from the car being in an accident, so I removed the motor from the spare and installed it into my mirror housing.
Not hard to do. The motor is held in place by three screws. Remove these screws, take the electrical connectors out of the connector socket with a pair of needle-nose plyers, remove the wiring and pull through the rubber gasket on the outside edge of the mirror and pull the motor out of the mirror housing. Replacing and installing the motor is reverse if disassembly.
Attached is a pic of what the motor looks like seperated from the housing.

[cooljjay]

Almost everything including switches, motors and plugs can be disassembled on a w123...you should move your repair thread to the next level....pop the motor apart, degrease it....re grease and re install it...then you would have a really nice working motor....

[Stretch]

Great pictures - I had no idea it was made like that. I eyed my mirrors suspiciously and thought "I'd better not play with them - I'll break them" and put them somewhere in storage...

[steeleygreg]

cooljjay, that's the plan. That is to disect the motor and fix and make it turn freely. I'll update this thread more tonight. In reality, prior to installing the new motor, I studied how the mechanism tilts the mirrors. Pretty ingenious how they did it. I put a few drops of very light machine oil on the threads to minimize binding on something that is potentially 30 years old. ALso I cleaned up the threads.
Stretch, thank for the compliment.

[sokoloff]

Nice work - please tell us the end results. My 240D has the same problem.

[steeleygreg]

OK, got some work done on this last night. The method of troubleshooting which I'm going to do is to start with the least evasive first. Meaning that I'm going to remove everything before attempting to take the motor assembly apart. The problem with this motor was it would go left to right but not up and down. Feeling the motor with your hand while using the joy-stick control on the center console resulted in the motor would make a Clicking type noise when trying to get the motor to go up or down. Upon visual inspection, the screw threads had so much crud that prehaps it was causing the mechanism to bind.
The below pics show the screw threads move up and down by a plastic thread in the switch drive housing. This needs to be cleaned up before doing any trouble-shooting. This can be done in a few ways but a cleaning agent like Kroil and compressed air. PS these where much dirtier prior to taking these pics.

[steeleygreg]

My plan is to clean out the motor with compressed air and connect the motor to the switch as it normally would exist in the car. Test with the switch using a non-resistive load a see if the motor operates as is should.
If it operates correctly, then put unit back together lubricating all parts and do a final test. If not, then continue and attempt to crack open the case.
My hopes are that the adjusting threads where gumming up the motor and causing it to bind. This would explain why the motor just clicked when trying to get it to go up/down.

[steeleygreg]

Her are more pics

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[Stretch]

Hey Greg have you been using a fibrous cloth to wipe those parts or have you been using wire wool? I see strands of stuff...

[steeleygreg]

LOL. No Stretch, it's neither. It's dog hair from 2 dogs which we have, that are currently shedding !
What I used to clean the parts was an xacto knife for originally the screw thread where so dirty, I couldn't see if they where metal or not. Once determined what they where solid metal, I used a commercial auto spray to clean them up.

[Stretch]

Dog hair - blinking heck - if there's that much of it about you should be spinning it and selling the wool.