Driver's side wing mirror not folding
 

Hey guys,

The folding functionality of my 86's driver's side wing mirror has stopped working a few days ago, and I could use some help with diagnosing the issue.

For a few days it was kinda working, in that it wouldn't fold on its own, but if you gave it a small nudge, it would go the rest of the way and resume working just fine until the next startup. Now it quit working altogether and all I can hear is a clicking noise inside the mirror as I press the fold / unfold button :(. The passenger side still works fine.

A quick glance at the owner's manual shows there is only one fuse for the whole door, and since the mirror's adjustment and window motor still work, I'm afraid the solution isn't that simple.

Any ideas? If the motor clicks, does it mean it's still good?

Also, I'm not sure what the part # for a replacement unit would be. It seems the motor isn't sold separately and the whole sub-assy needs changing. SU00303051 is a likely candidate, but am not sure it's the power-folding reference.

Thanks!

Well I ended up buying a "replacement" motor on AliExpress. Not entirely sure whether it's the right fit, but it was 5 bucks, and I was told by a UK forum member that the disassembly of a mirror is fairly straightforward. We shall see about that when the motor gets here.

OK, solved it, though it did involve rather copious amounts of swearing.

I’ll try to sum-up what I’ve learned doing this so that it’s easier to reproduce for whoever comes next.

First, you need to take the mirror off the car, which isn't that easy. I’ll let the below video show you as he does everything right. You should mark the small window's original position where the screws meet the body, in order to put it back correctly later on. If you put it back too low, you'll probably get wind noise in the cabin.

this video

Once that’s done and you have the mirror off, remove the glass: put it so that it’s angled towards the inside (i.e. where the car would be), grab the far end of the glass, and gently pull on it. Remove the heat pat wires.

Then, you’ll need to take off those three screws, the three Philips head screws holding the mirror to its pole (they're soft metal, I found using a power tool prevented messing them up), and finally remove the one screw holding the pole connection to the mirror. :

https://i.ibb.co/xst03Vs/IMG-0946.jpg

(Side note: if you need to swap the power adjustment motors, they can be accessed undoing the three screws and four clips on the white plastic part. No need to remove the mirror from the car to do that)

You can now remove the mirror mechanism from the housing. Gently pry open the four clips holding the motor housing shut (two on either side). The motor will be located where the blue arrow points to:

https://i.ibb.co/34q77sB/IMG-0947.jpg

Now remove the old motor and put the new one in. Here are the motor's part numbers, for reference (stock on the left, AliExpress replacement on the right):

https://i.ibb.co/jbFMg2y/IMG-0948.jpg

(Side note again: seems to be the same motor as the ones used for mirror adjustment)

You can now put the new motor in place of the old one (don't forget swapping the white output shaft "disc" that's on the stock motor).

This is where things got tricky for me. After putting everything back together for testing:

-First, the motor would only fold the mirror on part of the angle
-After removing the housing to test the mechanism alone, it would work through its whole range, but I couldn't reassemble the mirror pole back in the correct position (the holes didn't line up)
-Turned out I must have messed up the indexing of the mirror's position in relation to the pole, and since there was no nice way of setting it, I decided to remove the screws and worm gears, set the mirror in the right position, and put everything back in
-Now this gets funny.. the mirror now works and folds fully.... in the WRONG DIRECTION. Passenger mirror folds, driver's mirror unfolds. Passenger mirror unfolds, drivers mirror folds :bonk:
-Thinking I had put the mirror at the wrong end of its travel, I removed everything, set the mirror at the other end of its travel and reassembled it. Still didn't fold in the proper direction :bonk::bonk:
-The only conclusion that made sense was that the AliExpress motor I bought spins in the wrong direction. I wound up swapping the power and ground wires on the mirror's loom connection... and it finally worked :D

TL;DR: be careful not to change the indexing when removing the power folding motor, and buy a motor that spins the correct way. If you do that, you can fix the folding motor for about 10 bucks & 2 hours (vs. €400-500 + labour at Toyota).

There you go. Hope that helps.

What was wrong with stick your arm out the window and twist the mirror - :iono:

I'm too fancy for that. I even started using turn signals rather than hand signals.

My driver's side mirror hasn't worked for 3 years. I can "manually" adjust it by pushing on one side or the other. It clicks as I push but stays in place. Since I'm the only driver, I haven't moved it in 3 years.

What was wrong with turning your head?

:iono:

More things to go wrong.. keep it simple... untill it becomes too difficult to manipulate the neck/back, then go with guess work..

The last time I went with "guess work", it didn't turn out so well - :sigh:

I guess it's time for a rear view camera.:iono:

That image was slowly fading in my mind for it to come right back like a slap across the face... Oh, boy.. another few years of erasing ahead.. I don't know how you live with it? I would have got it fixed and offloaded the car.. and jumped into 'proper' sportscar, something like a MX5..

Welp, I did get it fixed (finally).

Yep, I owned a "proper sports car" for 8 years (a 2006 NC Miata) - :D