W211 Drivers door mirror memory lost

[RSS]

I have this recent problem with the drivers door mirror position being lost. Sometimes when I get in and start the car the drivers mirror moves fully up or down. I can move it back to the correct position and save to memory and it could be fine for a few days then it will do it again. Other times it might do it a few times in the same day, no pattern to it at all.

I took the cover off and cleaned up the connectors plus cleaned and greased up the motor housing as you could see the movement was not smooth. Nice smooth action to it now but the same intermittent problem persists.

The motor and I assume the sensors are in a plastic sort of half round shell behind the glass, it's held together with some screws and numerous plastic clips that I failed to get apart. I wanted to see if the position sensor needed cleaning etc.

I looked for a replacement on ebay etc but most are £100+ which is too much to take a chance when all I wanted to do was try replacing this half round motor/sensor part.

Has anyone solved this before? Or has anyone replaced a broken mirror in the past and have the broken one that I could have to swap over this internal part to trace the fault?

I'd assume the RH & LH mirror internals are the same so either side would do.

 

[Major774]

There is this item on eBay: 261501671487

Looks like in good nick and with original mirror too (£300+ just for the mirror alone from the dealer).

 

[davidjpowell]

These are prone to the loom cracking where the mirror folds. There's a howto thread on here somewhere. - http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/bodywork/62215-w211-door-mirror.html

Can't buy the loom separately.

 

[RSS]

There is this item on eBay: 261501671487

Looks like in good nick and with original mirror too (£300+ just for the mirror alone from the dealer).

Thanks for the heads up.

I purchased and went to pick up but then found it was the type without the puddle light so the loom was different. Didn't want to start swapping over bits as that might have carried over the part giving the problem. Shame as it was even the same colour.

 

[RSS]

These are prone to the loom cracking where the mirror folds. There's a howto thread on here somewhere. - http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/bodywork/62215-w211-door-mirror.html

Can't buy the loom separately.

Yes did read something about that, from what I could see of the loom there were no obvious kinks etc. I don't fold the mirrors very much, in fact hardly ever so the loom has not been moved back and forth. Having seen the mirror off eBay it is pretty simple to remove totally so I'll try and get the whole thing off to get a good look at the loom.

Having said that it's been behaving for a few days now.

The guy selling the eBay mirror said to reset the memory by doing a factory reset, this was accessible via the steering wheel buttons. Cant say I have ever seen that, also not sure what settings would be reset either.

I'm still keen to try the motor assembly inside the mirror, that must house the sensors as well. These must be common across any W211 with memory mirrors. I could even swap the left and right motor assembly as a test.

 

[Major774]

Shame that one didn't work out. The puddle lights for the wing mirrors were removed from 04+ cars I think. So you would need 53 and older.

 

[RSS]

I think I'll need to get a look at the wiring as a first step to eliminate that first.

 

[RSS]

Well for about three weeks now the mirror has not shown any problems, but I've done nothing to it.......

 

[RSS]

OK problem returned so I started to look round for a replacement motor. I called MB and there are two types fitted, with and without memory. Mine are the memory position mirrors and new the motor costs £102 +vat...

Interestingly MB wont give out the part numbers now, apparently it's to stop people ordering the wrong parts...! However I did get them to confirm the last 4 digits against what I'd looked up on the web. For reference:-

A 203 820 2442 - Motor without memory
A 203 820 2242 - Motor with memory
The same part is fitted to a range of models from C, E and ML, probably more, the P/N is stamped on the part so you can check easily.

The same part is fitted to either side, I was going to swap them over to see if the fault moved before ordering a new motor, then looked on ebay and found a second-hand one for £26 and have bought that to fit at the weekend.

Will let you know.

 

[Major774]

Hopefully that one fixes the problem.

 

[tabbywrench]

Are they folding electrical mirrors that regularly fold in and out. Then it could be a partially broken wire in the loom to the mirror shorting out

 

[RSS]

No never really fold the mirrors, hopefully will be able to swap out the motor this weekend to see if that cures the problem.