Mirrors

Usually yes, and it is one of the quickest repairs on a car. The glass is bonded to a backing plate that clips onto the adjustment actuator, so with the mirror tilted fully inward you can ease the old plate off with a trim tool wrapped in tape and press the new one on until it snaps home. Heated glass has two spade connectors on the back that plug in first. Order glass rather than a full mirror whenever the housing, the base and the motors are undamaged, which after a wall scrape is often the case.

When more than the glass has gone. A cracked housing, a base bent by a real impact, a fold motor that grinds, or adjustment motors that no longer respond all point at the assembly, and by the time you have bought glass, a bezel and a motor separately you will have spent more than the complete unit. A useful test: fold the mirror by hand and adjust it with the switch. If either feels wrong, look past the glass. Bear in mind that a complete assembly arrives unpainted on some listings.

The fold motor, in almost every case. It is a small geared actuator inside the head that swings the mirror against the door when you lock the car, and it fails in two recognisable ways: a grinding or clacking noise as stripped gears skip, or silence with a mirror that then has to be pushed by hand. Never force a powered mirror by hand while the motor is intact, since that is what strips the gears in the first place. Fold motors are listed here individually for left and right.

Look at the glass with the ignition on. Blind spot systems that warn through the mirror show a small amber icon in the outer corner, which flashes when a vehicle sits alongside. Cars without the feature have plain glass. The distinction matters because brackets and assemblies are catalogued separately for versions with and without blind spot, the loom differs, and fitting the wrong one leaves either a dead warning lamp or a fault code. Confirm by looking rather than by trim level name, since options were often fitted individually.

It depends on the listing. Some assemblies are supplied in body colour and others, described as unfinished or black, arrive primed and need painting to the colour code on your vehicle plate. Caps and bezels follow the same pattern. Read the finish field before ordering, and if you are having a cap sprayed, take the colour code rather than a photograph to the body shop. Textured black lower bezels and mirror bases are designed to be fitted exactly as delivered and never need paint.

Break the mirror down before you price it. Glass on its own is cheap, a cap is cheap, and between them they account for most kerb and car park damage. Bezels and interior mirrors are similar. Fold motors and adjustment actuators are moderate. A complete exterior mirror in body colour with heating, folding and a blind spot lamp is the expensive end. The band at the top of this page carries the current figures. Painting a plain cap to match the car is often cheaper than a finished assembly.

Test before ordering. Switch on the heated rear window, which normally feeds the mirrors on the same circuit, wait five minutes and feel the glass. If both mirrors are cold, suspect the relay, the fuse or the switch rather than the mirrors. If one is warm and the other is not, the element on the cold side has failed, and since the element is printed on the back of the glass, replacing the glass and backing plate cures it. Some designs heat through the base instead.

Only where the mirror carries a sensor. A plain heated mirror needs nothing. A mirror housing a surround view camera does need calibration, because the software stitches the images from four cameras into one overhead view and a few degrees of misalignment shows as a visibly broken join. Blind spot radar mounted in the rear quarter is unaffected by mirror work. Check what your mirror contains before booking anything, and where a camera is involved, plan the calibration into the same workshop visit.

The bolt pattern often matches while the electrics do not, which is the trap. A single model may have been built with plain, heated, folding, blind spot, memory, puddle lamp and camera variants, all sharing one housing shape and differing in connector pin count. Fitting the wrong one gives you a mirror that adjusts but does not fold, or a warning lamp that never lights. Count the pins on your old connector, match the OE number, and use the quote form if the reference returns nothing.

Flat glass shows true distances and a narrow field, and is normally fitted on the driver's side in markets that require it. Convex glass curves gently to widen the view at the cost of making objects appear further away. Aspheric glass combines the two, with a flat inner section and a more sharply curved outer band separated by a fine line, which gives a wide field while keeping most of the image undistorted. Match what your car came with, since the curvature affects how you judge closing speed.

Look at where it separated. If the mirror came away from its mounting button, the button is still bonded to the windscreen and a new mirror or a re engagement of the wedge fixes it. If the button itself came off the glass, it is re bonded with a proper mirror adhesive kit after cleaning both surfaces, not with general purpose glue. Auto dimming and camera equipped interior mirrors are heavier and carry wiring, so they are listed separately and are worth matching by OE number.

Yes. Mirrors carry an unusual number of variants: heated or not, folding or fixed, with or without a blind spot lamp, and painted in the body colour, so the rarer combinations are the ones without a figure. Give the number and the paint code and say which side. Where only the glass or the cap is damaged, order that alone. Glass and caps are separate references on most vehicles and are a small fraction of a complete mirror, and the fold motor is available on its own where the housing survived the impact.