As some folks might know. I've been having some problems with my passenger side mirror. My parallel park assist has never worked since I've owned the car. With some help from Archon and BillBoost I chased it down to a fault in the passenger side mirror. Special thanks to CFoote for the use of the Tech 2.

I scored a deal on a used silver mirror off E-Bay.....


So I removed the door panel and attached the new mirror to the passenger side door module.


The new/used mirror worked so that summed it up for the location of the problem. With the new mirror in hand I went to my workbench to swap out the guts. There are two obvious screws on the underside of the housing that need to come out however this isn't the place to start.


Start by being a little forceful with the mirror glass. Despite the word glass, it'* really very rugged. The mirror glass is glued to the backing plate. Note the two black wires on the left are for the heat grid on the back of the glass.


The backing plate snaps onto the motor assy in 4 places. Two in the center and two on the adjusters. Circled in red


With the backing plate removed it'* easy to see how the motor assy is mounted. There are the two screws under the mirror (noted in the previous pic) and two more in at the top of the motor assy bracket.


Remove the four screws and feed the wire out of the housing. All screws shown are T10.


I swapped out the bracket and motor assy and fixed the problem. When reattaching the mirror to the assy you have to line up the four points and squeeze it together.

As a point of interest. I took the motor assy apart to see how it works. There are three screws that hold the assy to the bracket and two shorter screws that hold the assy together. You remove the screws and two clips.


Here'* the inside of the motor assy. Note the center shaft in the middle of the gear on the right. It'* threaded.


The two motors drive two worm gears. At the base of the gears there are two detents. If the motor overdrives the gear the detent will slip to prevent damage.


When the motor turns, the worm gear turns. The detents then turn the center shaft. The adjuster has feet that ride up and down on the center shaft threads.


This moves the adjuster in and out of the assy. One adjuster controls the left to right of the mirror, the other controls the up to down.

One last note, the mirror and the backing plate can be pulled out without removing the mirror from the door.

Any questions, lemme know!

Great pics and very informative write-up!

Is it possible to remove the mirror and backing plate together, or does the mirror have to be removed first?

The mirror and backing plate should pop off and one unit, but on the one I picked up from E-Bay the glass did separate. My original stayed as one piece.

TJ'* brother'* came apart as well. Didn't look like they glue them overly well.

Karl..did you find the part that wouldn't read the position?

Thanks. It was lucky for us that the glass came off from the one, as it does show much better how it all goes together.

No, I'm not sure how it finds home. Unless there'* a set high and low number of steps and it works off of that. The only thing in the motor assy is one board with no components on it, two motors and the gears.

Are there more than 2 wires going to the motors, or perhaps a metal wiper under the gears? The block diagram for the mirror shows the power for the motors, and a 5 volt reference signal that is fed to 2 variable resistors which likely reports the mirrors position back to the door module. Unfortunately, no wire colors are shown, just pin letters.

There are enough wires there to do more than run the motors. Thanks for the info Dick..that was the part I was looking for.

I didn't see any componants on the board and I pulled the gear on the up/down adjuster. There'* nothing under it.

How many wires to the motor? Perhaps it'* part of that? If it helps, this is the link to the diagrams.
Outside Mirrors