Driving along recently on a windy day, the wind caught a loose bit of fencing which moved itself into the path of my passenger door mirror! I heard a loud thud and looked across to see no more mirror on the passenger side. I managed to go back and pick up the mirror but it was completely cracked and useless. Looking at buying options, I decided to go for a similar aged CLK (mine is a 2001 CLK320 convertible) that was being parted out on eBay. He very kindly sent me both the passenger side and driver's side at no extra cost but the passenger side has different part nos. so I think this may already have been an aftermarket replacement. Fitting it would be really simple - or so I thought! Now I realise why there are new ones that sell the plastic backing plate separately to the mirror glass, as it looks much easier to unscrew the plastic base, the bit that moves electrically, fit that to the new plastic base then stick on the new glass. As you can see from the pics, both mirrors look identical, the metal clip at the top is missing on the old one as I took it to use on the new one. Looking closely at the plastic backing, there seems to be two plastic "hooks" which supposedly are meant to locate with something on the door-mounted backing plate but I cannot get this thing fitted correctly! Does anyone have any advice for me here, is there some trick that I'm unaware of? Any help would be greatly appreciated because I think it's essential that these cars have a passenger side mirror due to the massive blindspot provided by the soft-top and now that I'm driving without one I realise how much I use it normally. I also noticed online that you can buy just the self-adhesive mirror part and that sticks over the broken part but I didn't want to do that in case the heating element no longer worked - living in Scotland this is essential! (The reason why some of the glass is missing from the old one is that I started to try to remove the mirror and get a self-adhesive replacement but changed my mind and bought the secondhand one from eBay.)


The one on the right is the replacement but does not have the same markings/numbers as the original, otherwise it looks identical.

 

subscribing!

 

Success! After many failed attempts, a lot of head-scratching and some very bad language, I finally managed to fit the mirror today and it turned out to be ridiculously easy! The trick seems to be to use a screwdriver or similar flat-bladed item, to click the top of the backplate onto the mirror once you have located it at the bottom. Slip the flat-blade down from the top and use the top side of the mirror for leverage. Strangely enough, the metal spring bar at the top doesn't seem to matter, at least I kept it locked in place whilst fitting and now the mirror seems secure. The big test comes tomorrow when I actually take it out for a drive and let the wonderful British dirt-tracks, optimistically described as "roads" - do their stuff. If it manages to stay on after a day on Scotland's pot-hole tracks then it's a done deal! I'll have to wait for a suitably cold day to make sure the heating element works but I should be able to see whether the auto-dimming works when driving at night. I'm really so relieved because it can be quite dicey driving this thing without that passenger mirror, the blindspot caused by the hood is just too big.