Removing Glass / Glass Insert from Side Mirror?

[20Baja06]

I frequently fold my driver mirror in when parked (mostly in the garage). This week, I went to snap the mirror back to normal / operating position and it went completely floppy. I had to run so I zip-tied it in place until I had an opportunity to look at it. This also gave me an opportunity to research and I found it was common for the 3 bolts securing the two halves of the mirror assembly together.

Hoping for the best, I dove in and found… well, not the best. The bolts were all present and tight. Definitely recommend a P2 bit to remove those screws. Anyway, we’ll call the two pieces of the assembly the mount and the mirror housing, for simplicity. The mirror slips over a protrusion on the mount. Behind the actual mirror in the mirror housing where the two pieces come together, a spring sits around that protrusion and is captured and retained by a push-on style retaining ring that holds on the protrusion from the mount. That retention on the spring provides the force to keep the two halves “together”. The protrusion is what the mirror housing swivels about.

So, what has happened is the retaining ring has come off the mount protrusion and now the ring, along with the spring, are freely roaming in the housing behind the mirror.

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I tried to remove the mirror itself but had no luck. I dug and pried at the mirror to try separating it from the housing and it would not budge. I don’t want to break the mirror just to get to the ring and spring. So what’s the trick? This is a power mirror, to be thorough.