(just registered for the purposes of responding to this thread)

Boy, I'm glad these forums exist, and I'm glad mdisav pointed me to them when I bought the car. Just never needed them till now. :-)

I bumped my driver's mirror yesterday morning pretty hard squeezing past it, it snapped forward, snapped back, and flopped. I had to go one a 250mi round trip later that afternoon, and a floppy drivers mirror did not strike me as the best way to go, so I figured out how to remove it, initially assuming that with the "snap" I gave it had just popped the spring loose inside. Then I checked here after struggling with taking it apart, and discovered I was not alone ;-)

So I got it apart and did sokoloffs' modified repair method [photo below] with a vertical #8 x 3/4" screw (I drilled a 9/32" hole to minimize material loss) through the top and bottom of the frame, and it's back on the car and working fine. I agree 100% with the recommendation to remount the assembly to the car before trying to get the spring reattached; it gives you a solid structure to leverage against. Definitely connect the car side of the spring first, and then tightly clamp vise grips onto the mirror end and lean on it. Popped right on first try. Sure looked funny on the car without the cover though! [completed photo below]

The biggest missing detail for me was in getting the mirror glass apart from the rest. It would have helped to know that there is a layer of double sticky tape between the mirror and the motorized platform. If I had known that I would have felt more comfortable prying as I would know what I was prying against, instead of being very paranoid about breaking an expensive piece of heated electro-chromatic glass. Also, I wasn't 100% sure of precisely WHERE the two pieces were supposed to separate. So I took a photo [below] with the two pieces apart for others in the same situation, so you can tell what actually comes apart if you've never touched one of these before. Top/bottom orientation is correct, but the mirror is flipped over, as you can tell from looking at the two sides of the wire harness for the glass heating element.

Also, while you're looking at that pic - taking it apart from the top by releasing the wire clip is "more correct" than prying at the bottom. Looking at the back of the mirror glass, note the plastic bits at the rim of the circle at approximate clock positions 2:30, 4:30, 7:30, and 9:30. The bottom two mate with the projections in the same positions on the motor drive platform, so by prying at the bottom you're actually working against (and risking snapping off) those in addition to the adhesive. The top two plastic bits actually snap around the platform disk itself, and the fifth and final attachment point is held in by the spring.

So the challenge then is getting sufficient access to the spring, to be able to pop it, and thus allow you to pry the double sticky tape apart and remove the glass. In hindsight, now that I've done it once: Marty says to remove the glass first, and then loosen the wire bail inside the assembly to separate the housing from the guts. Instead, reverse it - fold the mirror assembly against the car and pop the bail loose FIRST. Then, return the assembly to normal position and adjust the mirror glass by hand so that it is "looking" as far "out" (away from the car) as possible, to get the largest gap you can between the inside edge of the plastic housing and the mirror glass. Now, you should be able to shift the loose housing around sufficiently to give adequate access to the back side of the mirror piece, [photo below].


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'98 E300, 148k, ludicrously loaded with every option

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