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Subject: Recent fix – passenger side power mirror Author: sinij : member since March, 2004 : 546 posts Posted on: 2005-08-03 02:33:34

Symptoms: Auto-dip working only sporadically, more often then not mirror will dip and then not come back. Sluggish response to manual controlling in only one direction. Ceased side mirror that wouldn’t move easily by hand.

Diagnosis: First mirror will not dip if your ‘adjuster switch’ is set to control its motion; meaning small black knob is at bottom position. Second more often than not switch needs to be cleaned or replaced when mirrors stop working. Make sure to test its functionality on both side view mirrors, if they ‘failed’ in exact same way yet you can adjust them with memory seat after manually moving them switch is a probable cause.

Parts: You will have to get working mirror of any color from E32 or E34 - to my best knowledge they share ‘guts’, glass and mounting points. If your car is black that will probably be the end of your problems and you can just swap mirrors. In my case car is very rare metallic blue on blue and I had only scraped-to-hell at one point white mirror.

Fix: You will have to remove side mirror that is held in place by one large hex bolt. To access it you will have to remove tweeter speaker. First undo small screw at the bottom to free up mesh-and-speaker assembly from plastic flame. Plastic flame is held in place by another bolt, remove it and you can wiggle plastic speaker frame free. Once you undo main bolt, might be problematic, you should be able to remove side mirror that now only held in place by electric cable and few metal mount protrusions.

Remove mirror and take it somewhere comfortable, you are in for a long haul if this is your first time removing glass mirror. To remove glass mirror you need to rotate white ‘guide’ ring through small access/drain hole at the bottom of the mirror. I manually tilt mirror to extreme upward position until I can see white ring through an opening at the bottom and then use metal hook to slide white plastic clip. Once clip is undone you can remove mirror, it is often weakly glued, probably to hold it in place during assembly.

Once you remove glass mirror you can access electric ‘guts’. Electric assembly is mainly consists of two servos and a round moving mirror mount. Sometimes one of the control slider that connect servo motor works loose from rotational frame and that is the problem. Next you want to undo three screws holding ‘guts’ in place, remove protective rubber sleeve and remove lid at the back that hides electric wiring. Unfortunately that is as far as you can go non-destructively - there is no way to remove cable that connects side mirror assembly from the mirror frame. You will have to unsolder ‘guts’, carefully noting order and position of wires, to swipe them. Assembly is reverse of disassembly.

If somebody want to host pictures - I took some while I was doing it.

• Recent fix – passenger side power mirror - sinij 2005-08-03 02:33:34 (10805 views)
  • Pictures (pic) - sinij 2005-08-04 12:06:10 (2792 views)
    • Re: Pictures (pic) - sinij 2005-08-04 12:08:21 (1984 views)
  • you can host the pics here - shogun 2005-08-03 03:45:45 (1351 views)