Electric wing mirror keeping whirring but no open:(

[Kitegirl]

Hi people,

My driver's side wing mirror didn't open yesterday morning, just kept whirring... I pushed it back gently, and now it just blows in again and keeps whirring.. I had to do a 5 hour round trip with it like that yesterday...

What can I do??

I did seach, but haven't had any luck...

Please help.. after finally getting my leisure battery wired last week, am now gutted about this.. it's noisy, dangerous and I'm going away a lot in the next month...

Is it an expensive/big job to fix? Do I need parts??

Please tell me it's nothing and easily fixed

Many thanks, Dee

[missfixit70]

mikeonb4c repaired his & posted some piccies & stuff if that helps in your search, or pm him.

[bigdaddycain]

I think mike eventually had to replace both mirrors though kirsty, if my memory serves me correctly...I had the same thing happen to my driver's mirror kitegirl, i taped up the mirror's (both of em) at the base using black insulation tape, (both of em so i could switch the mirror fold switch to off, to stop the whirring) Mine was like this for months till i could replace the units.

Repairing seems to be a bit of a hit or miss affair...

[mikeonb4c]

Yup. My repair work, although I thought it was solid, didn't last very log. My judgement is that it is simpler to open them up and disable the retracting motor. They can then be persuaded into the right position (they tend to click into place) and just left as unretracting. Then find replacement as and when one comes up at a reasonable price (but of course its only a matter of time before that one goes too I reckon).

I'm eternally grateful to Wayne for selling me his old ones. But I'm philosophical about how long it will be before they play up. 13+ years old plastic - no brainer!

[Kitegirl]

Thanks for the reponses people.

Turns out on of my best kitemates is an autoelectrician..... now if only I'd known that for the last year as I hunted for someone to wire my leisure battery

Anyways, he's had a look and one of the 4 or 5 cogs inside the motor is broken.. he reckons it can't be fixed and so the only option is to replace it.

Can you buy the motors seperately or am I looking at one of these £190 full wing mirror jobs?

Mike - a friend of mine had his passenger side glass broken and replaced the whole unit.. he still has the old one.. do you think the motor could be swapped into mine seeing as mine's the drivers side that's gone??

For the time being my friend has disconnected the motor from the broken mirror and put a screw in it so it stays permanently open.. and the switch still works the passenger side.

If only I'd known he was an autoelectrician.. I thought he was an engineer!!

[mikeonb4c]

Mike - a friend of mine had his passenger side glass broken and replaced the whole unit.. he still has the old one.. do you think the motor could be swapped into mine seeing as mine's the drivers side that's gone??

You can certainly buy replacement glass, as long as there is no damage to the 'snap on' fitting on the mirror base unit.

I found the easiest, safest way to remove the mirror glass was using a big rubber sucker (I had one from a camping shop) and plucking it off (I was frightened of breaking the glass if I tried to lever it off). So you could pluck the glass off the old mirror. Then you could compare your friends mirror with yours to see if theirs is damaged. If not, don't fit the glass but mount the unit in the Bongo and see if it all works fine. If it does, then fit the glass and job done. Might be best to ask you autoelectrician mate if they can do all this if you are not confident, though it is all fairly straightforward really.

Alternatively, your autoelectrician mate may be able to cannibalise one good mirror out of the two.

Gotta be worth a try. Good luck

[thedogsbollox]

Sorry to hijack this thread but i used my drivers side mirror to have a shave and afterwords the folding mech didn't work. After some pulling and pushing and hitting the switch on/off there was a solid cracking noise and all was cute. Tell me what went wrong?

[bigdaddycain]

Sorry to hijack this thread but i used my drivers side mirror to have a shave and afterwords the folding mech didn't work. After some pulling and pushing and hitting the switch on/off there was a solid cracking noise and all was cute. Tell me what went wrong?

You removed the mirror and took it into your bathroom so you could have a shave?

Try asda or tesco, they have some really nice mirrors, which can be used in a bathroom, it saves having to open the toolkit up every time you get a bit of stubble....

Yeah...the click is the mirror just righting itself after it's been manually knocked out of position...

[tim2985]

you can repair broken retractable mirrors easily with a 4.5 mm drill and a roll pin - the final drive of the reduction gear lug snaps off - easily repaired - I have done loads - total cost of parts about 1pence and its stronger than before !!!

[missfixit70]

Any details on that Tim, piccies, or where to get the bits, for those that don't know what you're on about

[mikeonb4c]

you can repair broken retractable mirrors easily with a 4.5 mm drill and a roll pin - the final drive of the reduction gear lug snaps off - easily repaired - I have done loads - total cost of parts about 1pence and its stronger than before !!!

Nicely put tim2985 (though I'd question 'easily'). Must take mine apart to inspect them. I did this repair on both (actually on one it wasn't the lug that had gone but the moulded recess it sat in) to what I thought was a high standard (I'm used to doing fiddly repairs like this - especially awkward with the mirrors as they are packed with special grease I didn't want to lose and yet I needed to degrease around the areas to be glued). But one of them quickly blew an electrical component after operating it a few times, and the other one went back to whirring after a couple of months. If when I finally investigate, I'll report back

[bigdaddycain]

That special grease will be the same stuff used on diffs on radio control cars mike...a couple of quid from a model shop.