passenger side folding mirror won't adjust....

well guys, a while ago both of my mirrors stopped adjusting, so i folded them inward and sprayed the insides with spray lube....
which worked fine for the driver side, but my passenger side won't adjust at all, just hangs facing downward....
which leads me to believe something in there came apart somehow....likely rust related

im not entirely sure how to get the mirror off so i can see what exactly went wrong, hell i'll be honest i don't even exactly know how to remove the door panels....can anyone point me in the right direction here?

it's a 92 2door with folding mirrors (not powered)

What happens here is that the mirror pivots on a little gimbal made of some sort of pot metal, perhaps aluminum. When this corrodes and gets stiff in its mountibng, it tends to break. One of the easiest ways for it to break, unfortunately, is if someone coaxes the mirror by hand when the inner joystick stops working. As far as I know, there is no way to get inside this other than to remove the glass, because the screws are behind it. I have read that you can get the glass out unbroken by heating it up with a hair dryer, but I have not tried this, working only with ones that were dead already. If you can get it open, you will see the little cross-like gimbal that breaks. I have heard of people making a replacement out of pieces of welding rod welded together. If you still have an unbroken mirror, make sure you squirt lube into it, and exercise it only with the joytstick control. If the giimbal is getting stiff and you push on the glass, it will break and go slack. If it's beginning to stick, you can often get it limber again by just operating the control over and over again until it loosens up.

If you break the glass, you can probably still find another mirror to glue in its place.

Remove the plastic triangular trim piece on the inside.

3 torx screws + 1 little phillips head screw. Unscrew the set screw on the stem of the adjuster. Remove the mirror assembly.

Installation is the reverse of removal...as far as FIXING it, I personally wouldn't go there. I'd replace it. Junkyard or ?

REsponding to above, indeed these mirrors are very easy to replace. Just make sure you get good ones with a warrantee or that you can try out, so you don't end up getting floppy ones again. If you're tired of fussing with them, you can replace them with the entirely manual (just push on glass without harm) type which was standard on pickups, and may have come on some low line sedans as well.

Matthew Currie said:

REsponding to above, indeed these mirrors are very easy to replace. Just make sure you get good ones with a warrantee or that you can try out, so you don't end up getting floppy ones again. If you're tired of fussing with them, you can replace them with the entirely manual (just push on glass without harm) type which was standard on pickups, and may have come on some low line sedans as well.

Click to expand...

My passenger side is a manual mirror. I can't reach over there when I'm driving anyway.



Nothing worse than floppy...floppy anything!