Last week I bought a new battery and PCV valve for the old girl and today I fitted said items…
Out with old.. I cleaned the plastic battery surround while it was out and wanted to rub back the original battery stay and repaint that but I decided that was a job for another day..
Whilst this lot was out I found a bit of rust under the tray which I wanted to rub back properly and repaint… but I decided that too was a job for another day
I did however wire brush it, give it a good clean and degrease then found a random can of white paint and applied abit on the rusty areas… temporary protective measures
Before
After
So last week after all was said and done I parked the car in the garage but forgot to fold the mirrors in electrically and as the battery was stuffed I couldn’t fold them with the button after I switched it off, so in my haste I thought it possible to just fold it manually by hand…
This was not the best thing to do… it went abit with a loud click and then wouldn’t centre correctly.. o dear..
So today one I got it all up and running I was hopeful that one press of the button would just reset the mirror and all would be fine in the world again… that was not the case.. it just skipped teeth until you gave it a helping hand then it would complete its travel and open out again no problem but just would not work from the beginning…
Off with the door card it was…
I was amazed to find I am the first person since this car was built in 1996 to have removed the door card
still had the original membrane attached and speakers
Next the mirror was stripped..
Inside there’s a plastic cap over the assembly, removed that..
Looking at it I was amazed to find there is a little toothed belt inside driven by a motor and sub gear..
I plugged it back in with this apart and could see the belt was just skipping and it appeared to not have enough tension on the belt to drive the other gear which had a sprung recess type assembly to keep the mirror tight at either ends off its travel…
next I removed the motor..
Once I did this I found the shaft for the sub gear just fell out which was obviously not seated correctly..
I reinstalled the shaft with a bit of a tap and reinstalled the motor.. this was abit tricky the get the gear lined up and it does appear that there are timing marks on the sub gear but due to the skipping they weren’t aligned and I didn’t want to strip it any further to do so but I managed to get the gears meshed and motor screwed down..
a test found it all worked correctly so it was just a case of putting it back together carefully…
Hope this helps someone in future who has dodgy electrical mirrors