Joseador

Hi, this is my first DIY, and actually English is not even my first language, so bear with me any mistakes I make along the way.

My girlfriend in all her vanity, broke the passenger side vanity mirror cover, it used to stay open with the light on, but now it won’t stay up, when you let go it would go down and close. I looked all around the web but couldn’t find any fix for this. What I did find was a few guys with the same problem. So, without wanting to pay around US$70 for a new one just for that miserable thing, I started the journey to fix it, below you’ll find a few steps to get it fix. I’m sorry that the pictures aren’t as helpful as in other DIY, but I wasn’t actually sure that it was going to work while I was doing it.

Tools you’ll need:
1. Phillip Screw Driver
2. Hard Pointy thing (anything from a needle to an icebreaker)
3. Needle-nose Plier
4. Silicon gun

I used this as my hard pointy thing.


First the steps to removal of the cover:
1. Unscrew the two screws that hold the sun visor to your cars roof.
2. Unplug the light cable and complete dismount the sun visor.
3. Put out the two pins that hold and pivot the mirror cover. For that, use the pointy thing to get out a bit of the pin, and then use the plier to pull the rest out.



4. Take off the mirror cover.
5. Then you’ll see a thin metallic brownish thing, that’s part of the mechanism to hold the cover up. The problem is that the plastic holder for that metallic piece is really thing and weak, so it brakes really really easy. (I broke the left one, that was in good shape, fixing it, but is all good)
6. Also with the plier, take out those pieces, an then comes the hard part.
7. Separate the mirror holder from the rest of the sun visor. As you can see now, the mirror holder is attached to the sun visor by five pressure clips. Start form the top, use the two holes were the cover pivots and pull carefully until it pops out.
8. At the bottom is the fifth and most difficult clip, be very carful with this one.

Now you have all the parts ready for the fix.
1. On the back of the mirror holder, but back the metallic brownish things, with the curve part up, and fix it at the bottom with the silicon gun.
2. Align the parts and mark were the curved part of the metallic thing will almost touch the visor
3. Use the silicon gun again and put enough silicon on the sun visor in the place you marked, enough for it to make pressure to the brownish metallic part. Let it sit for a minute, then assemble the parts and you are done.

Good luck…

Grace_Excel

iTrader: (5)

Great link, this should be in the DIY thread.

Matt_P

I did a modified version of this on both of my visors. I used a glob of JB Weld (metal reinforced epoxy, for those not in the US) to hold the springs in place. No problems since then.

Really bad design by Mazda on these. 1/16" wide piece of plastic to hold spring tension in place...

Matt_P

Oh, and the benefit over silicone is that it sets hard so there is no flex to the spring mounting.