210 door mirror dying or sick?

[welland99]

My drivers side door mirror has been a bit off colour recently and i wonder what's up with it?

At first, there was a thin portion along the top edge that didn't reflect too well. It looked as if the mirror film might be delaminating from the glass. But this has now spread, and there appears to be liquid behind the glass in places, and other places look misted up from behind.

The mirror is a heated, auto-dimming one.

What is happenning here? Do i need to remove the glass and do something (clean it?) before re-fitting?

Or, is this the beginning of the failure of the auto dimming system, which will require replacement? (I have read something about chemical liquid inside the mirror in the auto dimming mirror).

Any advice gratefully received.

 

[billywhiz]

If the liquid is seperating then I'd say the mirror is now knackered.

I had the same with mine so rather than pay a huge amount of ££ for a replacement, I looked at the alternatives.

I came up with:

The W210 heated mirror, comes in two part, the heated element with mirror reflective glass and another part which is just pure glass - these two pieces are sandwiched together to form your mirror.

The Black plastic strip that goes around your mirror actually has two channels in it, for the said sections above.

I unclipped my damaged mirror ( glass section only ) then just pushed to one side the black strip, thus seperating the sections. Cleaned up the damaged back, reflective section, leaving all the heated section in place.

Then coughed up a very large £9.98 for one of these: MERCEDES W210 E 95-9 RIGHT SIDE BLUE ANGLE MIRROR GLASS | eBay

It's an exact fit for the outer glass section. Remove said piece of original glass from your mirror and place in garage as may come in handy one day ( or can be used as a tea cup coaster )

the ebay glass comes with it's own sticky back stuff which you just clip over your reflective section of the mirror - The outer black trim locks it all nicely into place.

Refit to your mirror housing on the car - and daa laaa job done.

I can tell you that even in the weather we have had recently, the mirror has behaved well and still warms up, melts frost etc as it did before.

If the outer glass ever starts to go cloudy again then even if I have to do it once a year, all it ever is, is a £9 odd fix and 20 mins of time.

Cheers

 

[welland99]

Thanks for your reply.

I'm confused by the notion of "liquid separating". What does this mean? And why could you not refit the outer piece of glass after cleaning it up?

If there are two pieces of glass, with nothing between them, maybe my problem is simply moisture between them? From what you have written, it sounds like i could remove the outer pane, clean it (and the outer face of the inner pane), then refit it.

How does the auto-dim feature work? Is this something to do with the outer glass?

 

[billywhiz]

I'd certainly try seperating them and cleaning up first, it depends on where the leakage is. Whether it is an 'age' thing with these mirrors, I don't know. When I seperated mine it looked like there was a small crack that had made it leak and it was mucky behind.

I did clean it all up but realised that I couldn't save the mirror so started looking for replacement / fixes.

It possibly is the outer glass that has some kind of polarizing capabilities, but the blue glass I have replaced it with seems to do fairly much ok job and matches the n/s in terms of tint looks. - Haven't really noticed much difference in 'dazzle'

When I last looked at a complete replacement mirror they were circa £150+ - you maybe get lucky on ebay etal.

Certainly try and salvage it first, as I said they come apart easy so set aside around 30mins or so to strip, clean and refit.

EDIT > Meant to answer this > I didn't refit the original outer glass as the new 'stick on' glass replaced it's space in the outer black trim section.

 

[Dec]

Thanks for your reply.

I'm confused by the notion of "liquid separating". What does this mean? And why could you not refit the outer piece of glass after cleaning it up?

If there are two pieces of glass, with nothing between them, maybe my problem is simply moisture between them? From what you have written, it sounds like i could remove the outer pane, clean it (and the outer face of the inner pane), then refit it.

How does the auto-dim feature work? Is this something to do with the outer glass?

Further explanation of your problem here… Side View Mirrors filled with liquid??!!?? - AudiWorld Forums

The fluid inside the mirror, if any present, may damage the paint work so should be washed off.


Dec