Morning all.
Yesterday I parked Maybelline and folded in the door mirrors, just as I've done every time I park in a place where some passing idiot might knock them. The difference this time was that the mirror just came apart in my hands. No warning, no indication that anything was amiss - just a separation of the housing into its constituent parts, leaving the mirror dangling on a wire.
Now I do fold the mirrors on a pretty regular basis, but I'll stress at this point that I'm very careful how I do this, and always use both hands. So I'll confess to being somewhat surprised by what happened.
I've now dug a little deeper and can tell you there is a design fault in the housing which means this will eventually happen to all 500's, if you fold the mirrors ofter enough. It doesn't matter how careful you are, and you won't get any warning - one day, the mirror will just fold in & fall apart. It could happen to you the next time you fold in your mirror.
You might be forgiven for thinking someone might have previously knocked the mirror and weakened something, or that it had frozen up, or whatever. It's none of these things - it's just plain simple cr*p design :bang:
How do I know this? Well, I've completely dismantled the mirror & identified the cause of the problem.
The folding part of the housing is held against the fixed part by a bush, with a powerful spring providing the clamping force. Tabs on the end of the bush locate it in the fixed part of the housing, but each time you fold the mirror, these tabs rub away a little bit of the plastic. One day, it rubs away one bit of plastic too much & that powerful spring pushes the whole thing apart. Nothing is actually broken, but too much of the plastic has worn away to stop the bush from popping out when you fold the mirror.
The easy fix is to replace the whole door mirror, but this costs money. Quite a lot of it - anywhere from £65 for a dubious internet pattern part to (I'm admittedly guessing here) around £200 for a main dealer labour inclusive replacement.
The (much) harder fix is to repair it. Follow me in real time on this thread today as I attempt to do just that.
Yesterday I parked Maybelline and folded in the door mirrors, just as I've done every time I park in a place where some passing idiot might knock them. The difference this time was that the mirror just came apart in my hands. No warning, no indication that anything was amiss - just a separation of the housing into its constituent parts, leaving the mirror dangling on a wire.
Now I do fold the mirrors on a pretty regular basis, but I'll stress at this point that I'm very careful how I do this, and always use both hands. So I'll confess to being somewhat surprised by what happened.
I've now dug a little deeper and can tell you there is a design fault in the housing which means this will eventually happen to all 500's, if you fold the mirrors ofter enough. It doesn't matter how careful you are, and you won't get any warning - one day, the mirror will just fold in & fall apart. It could happen to you the next time you fold in your mirror.
You might be forgiven for thinking someone might have previously knocked the mirror and weakened something, or that it had frozen up, or whatever. It's none of these things - it's just plain simple cr*p design :bang:
How do I know this? Well, I've completely dismantled the mirror & identified the cause of the problem.
The folding part of the housing is held against the fixed part by a bush, with a powerful spring providing the clamping force. Tabs on the end of the bush locate it in the fixed part of the housing, but each time you fold the mirror, these tabs rub away a little bit of the plastic. One day, it rubs away one bit of plastic too much & that powerful spring pushes the whole thing apart. Nothing is actually broken, but too much of the plastic has worn away to stop the bush from popping out when you fold the mirror.
The easy fix is to replace the whole door mirror, but this costs money. Quite a lot of it - anywhere from £65 for a dubious internet pattern part to (I'm admittedly guessing here) around £200 for a main dealer labour inclusive replacement.
The (much) harder fix is to repair it. Follow me in real time on this thread today as I attempt to do just that.