Side view mirror ver.4.0
Alright so today on Repairs101 I’ve got something new… well, OK. It’s actually kind of something old because this is one of the original five videos that I shot when I first had the idea for this show. And… and so yeah this is probably the fourth time I’ve released this video. The first time it was only up for a few minutes before I realized I had forgotten to put in the music track.
You really just need a small handful of ordinary tools and you can even make your own pry-bar.
So if you’re looking for any of these tools many of them are available on my website’s Amazon store.
So you probably don’t need a torque wrench for this. But I used one in order to illustrate how little power is required. Here I’m showing how can easily make more than fifty-three foot pounds of torque with one hand. And the job here only requires one twelfth of that power : fifty-three inch pounds. So to get the inside door panel off you need to pop off this little cover and undo the hex head cap screws that it hides.
Next there’s a Phillips head screw holding a tray-like piece for the door latch and the lock actuator that you want to pop out.
Then you just work your door panel pry-bar in and pop out all the retainers until it’s just hanging there on a ridge across the top. Just pop up and away. And these are those retainer that you need the pry-bar for. Next you pop out these little dust covers to access the nuts that secure the mirror’s studs.
Notice that I’m using a ten millimeter socket on a three eighths drive wrench to remove this. But I’m going to use a quarter inch drive socket wrench to reinstall it in order to avoid over-torquing it. I probably should have undone this first but there’s no harm done. Pull back on the locking tab with your thumb and separate the connection.
Handy tip
If you take your fastener and load it into the socket with a piece of paper towel or shop rag, that will prevent it from slipping out when you’re trying to maneuver it into place. And then once you’ve started threading it you can just pull out the paper towel. Again, as I mentioned, I wind down the nuts using my quarter inch drive socket wrench in order to limit how much torque I can apply.
And I’ll say this again, too: I don’t expect everybody to have torque wrenches. But I’m using this one to illustrate just how little torque is used. The studs are just mounted into plastic so if you over-torque it you’re going to break it. And then you’re going to be looking for another new mirror.
Gonna put these dust covers back in. And so the door panel just hooks onto the top into the window channel.
So this is probably the trickiest part of the whole procedure. All you have to do is make sure the rod that actuates the lock lines up with the hole in the back of the switch on the back of the bezel. The way you do that is make sure they’re both in the unlocked position.
This thing’s quite a tight squeeze so I used my socket wrench to push on it to pop it in. There we go.
Alright as you can see : fully operational, the neighbors are all out of bed, it’s been quite a morning.
Alright so thanks for watching and if you enjoyed today’s episode please share it with your friends and Hey! Don’t forget to subscribe! And… it’s working… whoops. You can see I got it. We’ll have to edit out the part where I hit the wrong lever in my own truck.
