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Theft of electrochrome door mirror glasses

adb1986

New Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2012
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13
Car
E Class
A heads up to everyone, and a quick request for technical advice! Thanks to a local scumbag, I have recently fallen victim to the theft of the electrochrome door mirror glass from the drivers side of my 213 E class which I understand is comfortably over £300 to replace. I also know of others who have suffered the same with similar vehicles, so first of all a heads up to everyone (particularly around SE London) that there appears to be some criminal activity targeting these at the moment, so I'd definitely suggest making sure any CCTV you may have covers at least this part of your car!

Does anybody know, would the passenger side door mirror glass for a left hand drive version of the E class (i.e. the one which goes on the right hand side, does not auto dim and is considerably cheaper) would have the same mount as the electrochrome one? Personally, I can live without the auto dimming glass and am not keen to shell out £300+ each time these scumbags decide they want a payday at my expense. Just wondered if anybody knew before I order one (special order, non refundable part), whether it will fit? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Happy New Year all!
 
A heads up to everyone, and a quick request for technical advice! Thanks to a local scumbag, I have recently fallen victim to the theft of the electrochrome door mirror glass from the drivers side of my 213 E class which I understand is comfortably over £300 to replace. I also know of others who have suffered the same with similar vehicles, so first of all a heads up to everyone (particularly around SE London) that there appears to be some criminal activity targeting these at the moment, so I'd definitely suggest making sure any CCTV you may have covers at least this part of your car!

Does anybody know, would the passenger side door mirror glass for a left hand drive version of the E class (i.e. the one which goes on the right hand side, does not auto dim and is considerably cheaper) would have the same mount as the electrochrome one? Personally, I can live without the auto dimming glass and am not keen to shell out £300+ each time these scumbags decide they want a payday at my expense. Just wondered if anybody knew before I order one (special order, non refundable part), whether it will fit? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Puzzling situation, was it removed in total or broken out? :dk:
 
Sorry to hear that.

It might be flat instead of convex. I’d look for the non-tinting RHD version instead.
 
I suppose if one's wing mirrors are in the folded position. They still pull the mirror out to the extended position.

Absolute f.u.k.n. scumbags!!!!

Sorry I can't help with your replacement query.
 
Dimming glass is indeed hellishly expensive and very much in demand, so easy to sell on online.

We had the both standard mirror glasses stolen from our W163 ML in around 2006. The mechanism and housing were unaffected. Inconvenient but not too expensive to replace thankfully.
 
You can get aftermarket mirror glasses on eBay for around a tenner for most cars . The one I got for my S Class came from a seller in Poland , was heated , fitted straight in and I defy anyone to tell the difference from the expensive genuine one .
 
Interesting, might be worth using an etching kit to put the reg. number on the mirror glass e.g.
Only useful if the scumbags doing the nicking can actually read... :rolleyes:

Back in the late 1960's when I grew up there was a spate of car wiper arms getting bent up, aerials getting bent etc. in the street we lived on. After getting his wiper arms destroyed on two previous occasions, one of the neighbours employed a novel solution. He carefully secured some barbed fish-hooks to the back of the next set of wiper arms which resulted in a loud yelp from the street in the early hours of one morning and blood all over the bonnet of his car, but that was the last incidence of vandalism :)
 
Back in the late 1960's when I grew up there was a spate of car wiper arms getting bent up, aerials getting bent etc. in the street we lived on. After getting his wiper arms destroyed on two previous occasions, one of the neighbours employed a novel solution. He carefully secured some barbed fish-hooks to the back of the next set of wiper arms which resulted in a loud yelp from the street in the early hours of one morning and blood all over the bonnet of his car, but that was the last incidence of vandalism :)

Nowadays they would probably take you to court ... and win :(

Window etching used to be a pretty normal thing to do, with some insurance companies providing this as a free service. Wonder why it declined ... I guess it's more common to change registration nowadays (with personal plates etc.), but you could always put the VIN number on instead. Having to replace all the windows on a stolen car to hide the identity would surely still be a good theft deterrent.
 
Let's hope it cracked getting it out and it slit his wrist, and he went off and died somewhere, well one can hope!
 
They popped the glass out of the mirror housing, neatly removing all three wires. Unfortunately they also managed to crack the passenger one trying to get it out, and have left the shattered mess for me to clear up. Clearly know exactly what they’re doing, but execution still not quite on point. Fortunately, other than a few scratches on the inside edge of the mirror casing (presumably from a screwdriver used to pop it out), nothing else appears to be damaged.
 
Thanks to all for the replies. Just in case the information is useful to anyone (if you are unlucky enough for this to happen to you), I can confirm that my original thought of using a LHD passenger side glass to avoid the cost of replacing the dimming glass (£340 worth), is not possible. The mirror glasses are actually a different shape (drivers side is taller but narrower), so it will not fit. I have however been told by MB that there is a cheaper glass which is designed for the RHD drivers side (without the dimming), but unfortunately it isn’t suitable for cars which have blind spot assist. Typical!
 
Thanks to all for the replies. Just in case the information is useful to anyone (if you are unlucky enough for this to happen to you), I can confirm that my original thought of using a LHD passenger side glass to avoid the cost of replacing the dimming glass (£340 worth), is not possible. The mirror glasses are actually a different shape (drivers side is taller but narrower), so it will not fit. I have however been told by MB that there is a cheaper glass which is designed for the RHD drivers side (without the dimming), but unfortunately it isn’t suitable for cars which have blind spot assist. Typical!
Interesting that they’ve brought back asymmetric mirrors , but odd that the drivers side is the taller and narrower one now .

When this was first introduced on the W201 and carried over into the W124 , the drivers mirror was the slim wide one to give a wide view of the road to the rear , and the passenger one was the tall narrow one so that it could give an extended view towards the ground , without losing the view behind , which was handy when parking next to the kerb , or watching for low lying walls or bollards .

They were a nice feature of cars which , back then , Setright commented on as ‘containing more cleverness per cubic inch than any other make of car’ .
 
Nowadays they would probably take you to court ... and win :(

Window etching used to be a pretty normal thing to do, with some insurance companies providing this as a free service. Wonder why it declined ... I guess it's more common to change registration nowadays (with personal plates etc.), but you could always put the VIN number on instead. Having to replace all the windows on a stolen car to hide the identity would surely still be a good theft deterrent.
You used to be able to buy acid etching kits to do it yourself at one point, they probably had to ban it because some Doofus burnt himself and sued the company that probably went bankrupt after the court case
 
You used to be able to buy acid etching kits to do it yourself at one point, they probably had to ban it because some Doofus burnt himself and sued the company that probably went bankrupt after the court case

Yup I etched windows on several cars when I was young - you can still buy the kits on eBay and Amazon. Halfords offer it as a service at their stores.
 

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