Wait, what? Is this a car post? Yep. It is. Sorry to have to do this to you, but here’s the deal…. I have this Jeep problem. My SUV has around 160,000 miles on it and it’s got some issues. I’d really, really like to get a brand new car, but I really, really, REALLY hate car payments. The plan is to do some refurbishments to this one in order to squeeze every last dime out of it. Then I guess we’ll either trade it in, sell it, or donate it. The other exciting thing about doing some car projects is I’m not much of a mechanic. It’s exciting because I get to learn how to do all this car stuff and I’m going to share what I learn with you guys. I’m a WAY better carpenter than a mechanic and that will probably be obvious. I’m not planning on burying you with car posts, but here and there you’ll see some stuff. I’m okay if you’re not really into it. It’s probably somewhat useful, so maybe it’s worth keeping a couple of these posts in the back of your mind.
My first car post is going to be a how to on replacing a side view mirror. At some point last month, Lisa borrowed my Jeep. Totally cool with that. I’m not possessive about it. It came back with a loose passenger side mirror. Not like hanging off the car loose, but loose enough that it needed to be replaced. After googling for a while, I was able to find a fairly inexpensive replacement (~$50) from an aftermarket supplier. If you don’t feel like dealing with aftermarket vendors, you could always call a local car dealer that sells you car make and see if they’ll sell you the part. It’s guaranteed to be more expensive from the OEM, but it’s going to fit. The aftermarket vendors are hit or miss.
To start this project, you need to figure out how to get the mirror off. Some cars it’s pretty obvious and accessible. Most cars though, require you to take the entire door panel off. My Grand Cherokee is one of those cars.
Before I can pop the panel off, I looked for any screws that are holding the panel to the door. I found three. Two were phillips heads and one was a torx. The one phillips head was in that door cup thingy. Pretty sure it’s covered in french fry dust.
The other was under a small cap behind the mirror.
The torx was sneaky. It was behind the door handle.
If you ever do any type of work on your car, chances are you’re going to need a torx set. The torx has a mult-point head…
With the fasteners out, it’s time to pop the door panel off the frame. I basically looked for a decent place to jam my fingers in between the black panel and the silver metal door, then I yanked.
Those yellow plastic clips slide into grooves in the panel and then are pushed into the door to keep them together. If they break, they sell them everywhere… you can even buy them at Lowes and Home Depot. At this point, you can completely take the door panel off by disconnecting a couple rods that connect the door handle to the lock mechanism or you can leave them in place. Since I’m not messing with that stuff, I just left it hanging and moved on to the mirror.
With the door panel loose, the nuts that hold on the old mirror to the door are accessible. I just remove them with a wrench. Btw, almost all the nuts and bolts on a car are metric and not standard. Good to know. The mirror also has a little cable and a plug. I just unplug it and the old mirror is good as gone.
The new mirror went in the same way as the old one. Plug and play. To get the panel back onto the car, I just lined up the yellow clips with the holes in the door frame and hit the panel with my hand. They pop right back in.
Doesn’t seem too hard right? Good.
Ok. So, I promise not to turn this into a gear head car blog, but expect more of this once in a while.
Do you do any of your own car work? Would you like to? Is there anything you’d like to see?
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