electric side mirrors

[Robert Bondi]

Anyone have any tips on taking these apart? I've got the 77 chrome door mount style on the restoration car. I've verified the motors mostly work, but clearly need to get in there and lubricate the moving parts. I've got the mirror glass off, but now looking at a flat plate with 4 rivets. I don't see an obvious way to release it from the back either as I can peek in around the entire perimeter as I rotate the glass plate. My factory manual only seems to mention the non-electric earlier mirrors. Can drop a pic here later...

[Robert Bondi]

A couple pics on the 77 chrome door-mount mirrors:


Unlike all the other BMW vintage elec mirror repair photos floating around, removing the mirror glass just has me staring at the vault door with what seems to be 4 rivet heads. E28 pics I've seen talk about a quick release with a small screwdriver from the bottom of the mirror plate - I don't see any of that either.




The passenger mirror set screw had no head, so I got to drill that out just to release the mirror from the door. A bit of collateral damage to deal with from that too....

[Mike W.]

No experience on those mirrors per say, but what is the switch like? Anything like later E12/E28? On those the switches get dirty and need cleaning with say a pencil eraser to clean them up, you won't lose all functions, but they get really cranky and sometimes won't work at all in some directions. Fairly easy to clean but there's a little spring loaded ball you can't lose, so best done over a large towel or sheet or the like.

[Robert Bondi]

The mirrors weren't functioning when I started into this. Since there's a mixture of cosmetic issues and previous owner hacks, I'm replacing a lot of this stuff, including the switch. I'm actually planning to move to the later E12/e28 style with integrated selector switch and control joystick. When I electrically tested the mirrors directly, they do work; however, the electric clutch in one of them seems to stick a bit so trying to figure out how to get in there and inspect/lubricate.

I can say that control joystick has worked on my 530i all these years, so maybe it's more robust. It is also very rarely used.

Robert

No experience on those mirrors per say, but what is the switch like? Anything like later E12/E28? On those the switches get dirty and need cleaning with say a pencil eraser to clean them up, you won't lose all functions, but they get really cranky and sometimes won't work at all in some directions. Fairly easy to clean but there's a little spring loaded ball you can't lose, so best done over a large towel or sheet or the like.

[Robert Bondi]

Follow-up on the electric mirror break down:

Drilling out the rivets is the key to disassembly on this style mirror. The electric motor internals are clearly different than the later E12 and E28 style, but that was expected. The exterior is hideous with extensive bubbling throughout the chrome, so needed to strip down to a frame to have a shot at rechroming it. There are also decent used ones floating around for big $$$.

[dutch]

I just looked around a bit and it`s a very rare item on this side of the planet as well.... Personally I wouldn`t bother finding a used one. Nice chrome doesn`t mean it works fine.