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About 7 years ago the mirror reflective surface progressively became weathered and difficult to see anything in. I was parking outside at the time on the Wet Coast of Canada.
On one of our winter road - I stopped by an MB dealer shop / who quoted mirror replacement - an expensive venture.
Some one suggested a glass company in Palm Springs. They brought in a made to shape mirror and glued it on with 2 sided tape. 7 years later - no problems since.
I hope this story can help someone.
As it so happens ... my central mirror control seems to have gone wonky on the drivers side. My wife chimed in to say it has been acting up recently when she used her memory setting - after me driving on weekends.
I am not sure if I contributed some how by using the console control knob too aggressively ... or manually adjusting when I shouldn’t have.
The mirror drifted far left ... then the motor or mechanism inside the mirror made a tick - tick - tick sound. Then everything stopped working.
i had to adjust the mirror manually to continue on our drive yesterday.
Any pointers?
It sounds like one of the two mirror movement actuators has died.
When I said I had a spare mirror, I mean I have the whole thing. Mirror, structure, actuator, the whole thing ready to bolt on. I used it as a temporary mirror while I assembled enough parts to rebuild my old dimming, heated mirror. The new mirror assembly only supports the heated function and full actuation, of course.
I would have used the new mirror's guts, but the mirror. actuator, wiring harness and mirror back are different from my original.
I got a used, but newer MB dimming/heated mirror (just the mirror) on eBay for $109 (made in 2010 and a great deal since a new one is about $550). My mirror backing frame was damaged, so that came from eBay in Poland $40 shipped (only the entire mirror assembly is available from MB for about $1200).
The final piece of the puzzle was a damaged mirror backing plate which is the thing that the mirror back actually attaches to. The mirror backing plate which is in turn attached to the mirror movement actuator was damaged when I tried to remove my failed dimming/heated mirror using the idiotic videos on the Internet. There are a few tabs on the outside perimeter of the mirror back that EASILY get destroyed when using the video method.
The safest (and easiest) way to remove a mirror without destroying anything is to remove the mirror cover and then carefully remove the mirror from the mirror backing plate.
So I was backing out of my car port this weekend as my drivers side mirror caught the support pole and I heard a crunch - ouch! The mirrors glass shattered but stayed in place. An end piece of plastic chrome turn signal cracked off too. I have a 2003 E500 with 54k miles. It's pristine and nearly perfect condition. I could have cried but didn't, lol. Can glass mirror only be replaced? I have moderate skills but can teach myself anything with Youtube, lol. I want to fix and/or replace as soon as possible.
07-30-2020, 09:10 AM
