How hard is it to fit wing mirrors?

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tron

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Hi all,

What a shame my first post has to be an unhappy one - but a week or two ago both my beautiful chrome mirrors were stolen from my S3 in Bristol (had to drive home to Edinburgh with no wing mirrors - not fun!)

Audi here in Edinburgh want a grand total of 1,264.92 to replace and fit them - but 529 of this is labour (two and a half hours per mirror!). Paying a premium for genuine parts is one thing, but over half a k on labour is insane.

So the question is how hard is it to remove the broken bits and fit and wire in new mirrors with electric heating/adjustment, but not electric folding - I've checked the forum here and it seems mirror stealing is a known and fairly major issue :( but I can't see any reference to how hard it is to replace them, or if you need specialist tools, or anything like that. How much of the dash do I need to take apart to get at the cabling? Note my skill level is probably competent to good with tools/projects but novice with cars.

I'd be grateful for links/advice/experience! Hopefully my second post will be under better circumstances :)

Cheers,
Norm.
 
The answer to your question is John @ Bedrock VeeDubs in Motherwell in the future.

I take Der Panzer there for everything.
 
Where did they cut the wires?

Mirrors themselves are easy to fit but I fear the wiring could be a big problem.
 
You can see each side here - they were cut with clippers - very clean - clearly someone knew what they wanted and weren't afraid to take it...

(URLs in next post, can only post a URL after I've made two posts...)

Cheers,
Norm.
 
I wouldnt let audi anywhere near that, if you arent afraid of a small bit of soldering you could sort that yourself easily enough.

As said it will be time consuming but not difficult
 
Me too, mate - I almost cried, was a horrible feeling - I've been lucky enough not to have a car or my bike nicked or vandalised so far until now - I can't imagine what it's like to go down and find a gap where your vehicle is supposed to be.

Cheers,
Norm.
 
Gutted for you. The scum that nicked your door mirrors aren't doing this fair city an awful lot of good in the PR department :nunu:

Just out of curiosity, whereabouts was your car parked?

Mark.
 
It was parked on the road on one of the roads that comes off Gloucester Road - Bristol Flyer kind of area. Looked like a perfectly fine place to leave your pride and joy - but on another thread on here someone had his mirrors nicked while the car was still on his driveway, so there's no way to tell really...

Cheers,
Norm.
 
Sorry to hear what has happened. Makes me glad that i've just got colour coded ones! If you do a search, there is a post from a year back on how to cable lock the replacements to the car (to prevent a future theft).
 
its mickey mouse work mate.
You don't have to remove the subframe, you will get away with the door liner, just drop it and support it. you should have to remove any cable or door connectors (door liner has screw under neath (two of) one at the front top end corner and one at the back top end corner, you will also find the trim inside the grab handle either pops or slides off, can't remember of ot is screwed down, this exposes the heavier screw that you pull against when shutting the door, when all unsrewed the door slides up about 2-3 inches and will then come away, be careful not to pull to hard and pull anything off the inside. The trim slide into the window slot and over the door lock pin, goes up to get it off and in and down to replace)
Remove the inner triangular panel from the corner of the door inside the mirror, (pops off) it exposes a hex bolt that holds to mirror chassis to the door.

The triangular base slides forward and down into place under the rubber trim, removal is the reverse. once the bolt is out the only thing that will stop it falling to the ground is the cable.....don;t let it hang on the cable it will scratch your door

between the base (inside face) of the mirror chassis and the door is a square plug. The door side of the plug is wedged in place in the top of the door/corner of the window frame. it is a tight fit bit can be wiggled out once you remove the sound deadening.

pull the plug out through the door rather than in to the cabin otherwise the new mirror cable will not reach in far enough.

Plug in, wiggle connector block into place, wiggle mirro forward and down making sure rubber seal is not doubled back on itself, replace bolt (torque it up!) replace sound deadening, replace door trim (make sure it lines up with the dash by closing the door, very poor screw.hoel alignment!), replace corner trim.

laugh the laugh of someone who just saved £500!!
 
f@cking pikeys! those parts they stole are pretty f3cking useless without the chassis and a pain in the @rse to refit, soldering wires, getting base to click back in.

w@nkers.

All mirrors should have direct and open connection to the battery in my opinion....that would teach them
 
That's harsh man, I would go mad!!!!

I was thinking about puting some form of cloth covers over them when parked so they are not so obvious.

I know this won't stop people taking them but atleast makes them less obvious.
 
JCB - I'm convinced, thanks a lot.

Awesome - that combined with the useful pictures pasted above looks like it's a go-er - thanks very much guys for all your help and comiserations - I'm goign to shell out for the genuine parts (the car is perfect, I don't want to cut corners now) but I'll go for the fitting myself. I'll let you know how it goes...

Mirrors arrive on Aug 10th, I'll fit on the 11th!
 
hi I followed JCB's very good instructions in order to replace my door mirrors. Only trouble was I found a torx screw holding the mirror to the car. It's a 12 point screw. Do I specifically need a 12 point drive or can I use a more standard 6 point hex drive? Presumably it should fit??

Cheers
 
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