I picked up a cheap NC 1.8 for my wife to drive which has a few minor problems. One of them was a loose passenger side mirror glass. On investigation it was apparant that the break shaft had sheared and been repaired using contact adhesive to lock the break shaft in one position. I decided to investigate whether this could be repaired properly rather than cough over £100 on a new replacement.
The fix was successfull so I will document the repair using some pictures I took.
The significant challenge was to find a way of creating a solid fixing for the break shaft that has a hole through the middle to feed the wires for the mirror motors and heater. The solution was to use a piece of 15mm copper plumbing pipe, about 3 inches long, splayed out at one end and glued into the break shaft using a hot glue gun. Once glued and cooled I ran a drill through to clear the hole enough to get the wires back in.
Re-assembly is also a challenge; trying to find a method of compressing the strong spring to get the collar and U pin back in place. Eventually I compressed the spring in my vice and used a couple of pieces of stainless weld wire from my MiG twisted up like locking wire to hold the spring compressed a bit. Once installed I cut the weld wire to release the spring
You also need to dismantle the two plugs than go to the mirror motors so that you can get the nwires through the break shaft hole.
From start to finish removing the door card and mirror, fabricating the fix and re-assembling and refitting the mirror took most of the day. Maybe not cost effective if you cost your time but it saved me over £100 and cost nothing but time.
Hope this helps anyone else that has the ability and tools to attempt a fix rather than pay. (Warning: compressing the spring and removing/refitting the clip willtry your patience!!)
Thanks safetymatch. I did try tywraps as my first choice but they are too thick to get the spring back over the break shaft. Even weld wire was a close fit but with a bit of white grease and some gentle tapping the spring ended up far enough on.
Yes my method allows the mirror to rotate out of the way just like the original. The splayed end is to help the glued-in tube resist the pressure of the spring that would try to pull the glued joint apart.
Nearly 6 years later and I finally got round to fixing mine. I’d actually put a bolt up the middle 10 years ago, and whilst it worked, it wouldn’t allow the mirror to fold in. It was effectively fixed. So this weekend I took the mirror off and performed the copper tube fix. Everything is pretty straight forward other than replacing the spring.
What a PITA.
I bet it took me 2 hours or more to finally get the spring back on.
The biggest problem is finding something strong enough and thin enough to compress the spring.
Everything I tried fouls on the shaft, i ended up using paperclips twisted, and had to file a small groove in the shaft to allow the spring and paperclip to slide over the shaft. Was a real pain, I almost gave up 8 times.
For anyone else considering this… good luck.
