Now You See Me... - The Side Mirror Story

When trying to adjust the side mirrors, the one on the passenger side worked well, while the driver's side mirror seemed to be doing what it felt like instead of following the directions from the switch. At first we though something was wrong with the motor, but on close inspection it became clear that the mirror simply wasn't attached as it should. Instead of a metal spring clip thingy holding it in place, it was stuck onto the motor with some double sided tape, which had begun to come off. The metal clip that was meant to be holding it in place was missing altogether.

Before figuring out a permanent solution, we considered some temporary fixes. 

1. Double sided tape - the one we had was of such appalling quality that I had to wonder if it was indeed double sided. Didn't even try using that as it was obvious it wouldn't hold.
2. Blu-tack - also a bad idea. Apart from not sticking properly, I was concerned that it may lose its hold altogether in rain/cold
3. Velcro picture hanging strips. These held and we could adjust the mirror properly, but after coming back to the car in a couple of days we could detach them very easily (probably again because of the impact of the nasty outside conditions), so it makes me think they could detach themselves very easily on the motorway, and that would be the end of the mirror then.
4. You can of course use instant glue, and that will probably keep everything in place very nicely, but then you won't be able to ever detach the glass from the motor, so any problems would mean having to replace both. 

To get some help with a permanent solution for this problem, I posted a message on www.mbclub.co.uk - a very useful forum resource and one I would highly recommend joining. One of the members had a broken mirror from his W202, which looked very similar to R129 and he was willing to send me the clip, which was extremely nice of him.

After wiring over the P&P, the clip got here very quickly and off we went to try it out. And boy is it a pain to try and make it go in. This is how the mirror casing looks:

The casing is all one whole part, so you can't take a part off to make it easier to fit the glass. What you have to do it try and get the motor to a good angle so you can reach in with some pliers and pop the clip into place - it will go around the top bit of the motor and hold it in place:

It wasn't possible to take any photos of attaching the clip as I could hardly see anything myself through the tiny gap. But it took so many attempts that we almost gave up. It's extremely fiddly and just doesn't want to both clip on and go around the motor - it kept sliding off and not being attached to anything once I clipped it into place. After attempt # 32198, I was amazed to discover that the clip had finally attached itself to something and I sure hope that this is how it's meant to be. The glass doesn't feel like it's in tight, but it's in place and it will let you move it around, so it seems to have done the trick. Here's how it looks now: