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Folding mirror repair kits.....

42K views 59 replies 22 participants last post by  Mthusiastic 
#1 ·
Hi,

The passenger side folding mirror has stopped working on my M5.

The motor worked fine but the mirror wouldn't lift and there was a nasty sound of gear teeth.

Now, after having the assembly apart 3 times already I have penultimately decided that the assembly is no longer saveable as the alloy dowls on the motor housing have both snapped off.

Anyway, upon further investigation it turns out there are 'complete' repair kits on eBay which have all the parts that I need, BUT the thing is, none of the kits mention the E39 as a fitment.......

The kits I've seen fit the X5, and there are some kits that fit a E46.

The parts in the photos look identical to the parts I require for my car.

I have messaged one company and they are of no help.........

Maybe you guys can help me out here, here's the eBay number for one of the kits - 131731576154

Looks the same as the parts for a E39 mirror assembly - correct?
 
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#4 ·
There are kits on eBay which have all the parts I need, but it says the fitment is for a X5 or E46, there is no mention of the E39.

I even messaged the company selling the kits, although they are based in Germany, so they may not have fully understood my request to be of any help.

I was hoping someone on here may have purchased one of the kits for a X5 and used it to repair his/her E39 M5 mirror because, according to the photo's the parts look identical
 
#6 ·
I've seen the 'fixes' online regarding the metal pegs with snap off - I just wish I'd spotted that in mine earlier - before I bent the motor housing out of shape with a hammer trying to extract the worm gear off the motor because this company in Germany sent me what looked like a replacement worm gear!.

Right now, I'm prepared to give it one more shot - buy a complete repair kit, but I just need to know if buying the E46 or X5 kit that the parts are going to fit
 
#8 ·
Well, I have already purchased the set of gears about a month ago from a german eBay seller, they were listed as a fitment for the E39, but as it was only the gears, and at the time of fitting I hadn't realised what had actually broken I was left with a mirror that still don't work and £30 out of pocket.

My concern is buying a kit and finding that it won't fit properly as it never stated in the listing that it will fit an E39.

I guess I've got to take a leap of faith, buy it and accept that I've wasted yet more money if the parts are incompatible.
 
#10 ·
I thought it was the gears that went out on mine, and was wondering what they were all on about when they were talking about the 'metal pins' that snap off the motor barrel, but then after disassembling it for a second time I saw what they were talking about!.

It's most likely the gear set will not be the solution to your problem, but the barrel set will!.......like the set that I posted the link to originally!............

Only thing is - It gives no indication that the parts will fit an E39, otherwise I would have took the plunge already.
 
#11 ·
I purchased a used drivers mirror from an individual here on the forum. I was told that it has a working folding motor. I might just do a little experimenting and see if I can fix the old one. I sure would like to find a really good fix for this. Please keep us posted on your findings with the parts kit that you get.
 
#14 ·
Pictures attached.

New kit is the lighter colored pieces, my original parts are the black/dark colored parts.

I tried to lay out the assembly, far right is the wing that the mirror glass/housing attach to. That piece fits over the outer housing from the kit, then the middle cup with ring gear fits into that. The motor cage fits into the middle cup piece and the "lid" closes over the motor cage. Gear shafts fit into the lid. Base plate attaches to the lid, securing the whole assembly to the car.

On the back of the lid you can see the bolt spacing difference for the base plate. Black piece is E39, silver piece is X5. The inside of the lid where gears fit looks the same, I didn't test fit once I realized the bolt hole issue because I knew I wouldn't be using that part.

The part I'm calling the middle cup, is the black piece with spring washers on it. It has a ring gear inside that engages the motor gearbox stuff in the lid. The kit came with a new black plastic molding of this piece without ring gear, washers, etc. I didn't see anything wrong with my old one and reused it.

The outer housing fits over the middle cup. M5 piece is black in the photo and the x5 is silver. This piece is identical, though again mine didn't have an issue so I retained the stock part since that's the only item in the entire assembly with a part number.

Visible in the photos is gear face width differences. Silver X5 gears had larger face dimensions, at least from this vendor they did). Longer shaft doesn't fit in the E39 lid due to gear face width. Shorter shaft does fit and seems to work excluding my other issues outlined above.

My old motor was a snug fit in the new motor cage, but it does fit. I tried my mirror with old motor and new motor and both worked. I also tried it with new "short" gear and that worked also. My old short gear gave grinding noises when attempting to fold in. So I'm not sure if that's a gear wear issue or something else. Due to the design, all parts are internal and it's incredibly difficult to troubleshoot.

I used white lithium grease for the moving parts. (maybe my issue for the mid rotation stall?)

The board on the motor fits on the new cage albeit very tightly. The blue wire has a clamp that secures it to the board. I removed the clamp to get the board transferred to new cage, however I could not get the clamp reinstalled on the board afterward and ended up soldering the blue wire on the board. Obscure photo of solder job is on purpose, don't judge. :p


-Ryan
 

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#15 ·
So what I am getting from your post is that everything didn't work until you swapped the short/small gear?

I've had this issue with the driver side mirror for a while now. Except my mirror folds in perfectly fine, but when it folds out completely you can hear the gear still turning inside as if it doesn't click into gear immediately.

I am curious if the small/short gear is the faulty point in the assembly?
 
#17 ·
That's accurate. For the sake of answering the OP's question about kit compatibility, I wanted to report the motor cage was a direct swap. From there things get muddy but I suspect my issues are different from normal, maybe. I wanted to post it anyway for the sake of accuracy but to area51's original questions I supplied an answer.



I'll apologize now for the long winded post. I sorta jumped in here with "yes it fits, but I still have problems" without much background. My current problems may not be typical for everybody wanting to fix their mirrors. This also isn't Reddit so I'll error on the side of more words.



To hit more on your question, I swapped the motor cage and put it all back together expecting glory. Everything worked with the rotation assembly minus the mirror glass, painted cover, pan/tilt motor (no reason to fully assemble before testing along the way). I started getting gear grind noises only after I fully assembled the mirror and put it on the car. (figures) Same exact noise I had before I took it apart. I made an assumption the additional weight of parts was enough to create the issue, and it still sounded like a gear alignment problem.

A couple years ago I found the info on mirror fixing on this forum, Mudbug I think (or something like that) where he drilled a hole and inserted a screw to mimic the broken post. I did that, and had no luck or improvement fixing the gear grind problem. I assumed then that I can inserted the screw incorrectly and adversely effected the gear alignment. When I saw Area51's question about the rebuild kits I did more digging and took a chance. With new cage installed I felt confident the alignment problem would be fixed and my kids would finally stop crashing into the passenger mirror as they cut through the garage. When I had the exact same gear noises as before I decided perhaps the gearing was worn down and not engaging properly. You can't shim the gears so if the cage was solid, gear wear would affect alignment. The only real way to test that would be clean everything up, blue some gears, and assemble/test. Every step I took I felt like "this is it" and skipped the in depth testing you would typically do for a gearbox.

With the short gear shaft from the kit installed, the gear grind noise was cured but now the assembly would stop rotating half way. After that I wondered if my motor was worn and lacking power so I swapped the motor. Same result. I put my old motor back in because I didn't like new and old gears mixed together. With the long shaft gears I had no choice due to fitment.

To step back for a moment, the car detects when the mirror is done rotating by current increase. In the picture above with the 3 cups laid out on a blue towel. The right part is where the mirror glass attaches. The next piece is the outer housing for the gearbox. It also is the ID of the bushing, and the surface that the mirror wing on the right glides on when rotating. You can see the square bump on the casting on the flange of the outer housing. That bump fits between the molded posts on the mirror wing, creating hard stops. So the motor turns until it hits one of the stops, current spikes and the car turns the motor off.

I think my problem now is excessive mechanical drag on the assembly, the car see's the increase in motor current and turns the motor off. Interestingly, increased drag and slightly worn gears could create gear slip that wouldn't be there when the drag is removed. My crossroads now is trying to decide where the drag is coming from and what can I do about it, and will that fix it?

I was getting sick of removing and dissembling this thing but now I sit here and wonder...so I'll probably take another shot at it when I get a chance. (I have 4 kids age 7 and under so time is not my virtue)

One thing I will try is using the outer housing from the kit, I haven't tried that piece yet. When I turned the outer housing and wing part by hand without gearing if didn't feel smooth, but that's the way it came from the factory and it's reasonable to assume it worked when new.

I hope I answered your question somewhere in all of that!



In that assembly Picture I mentioned above, the wing mirror part attaches directly to the cup with spring washers on it. It's keyed into that piece. So the outer housing (middle in the photo) bolts directly to the lid containing the gears and motor cage. The spring washer cup fits over the motor cage and inside the outer housing. Motor turns gears, which turns the spring washer piece inside the outer housing. The wing part fits over the outer housing and keys into the bottom of the spring washer piece. Lots of potential for mechanical drag.
 
#16 ·
Thanks I appreciate your post. This will always be there. That said and maybe there are new limits but each of those pics could have been 5MB. If that is not the case let me know. Since the board got sold there are a ton of new limits. I know I could post each of those images at 5MB no probs. They are clear at the size they are but I would be happy to ***** at the new owners if I can post a larger pic than you. If these owners are limiting pics of new members that is dumb. New members generate the most activity.
I love new members most, even though most ask questions already answered. You clearly are the exception because I have not seen your info posted before especially with good pics. I am here a lot! Could be every day, might even read every post even though I do not respond.
You did very good thank you much.
 
#18 ·
Thank you! I'll admit I had to search about picture posting, and also reduced the file size extremely. What I discovered was the file attach (paperclip icon) worked just fine. The drag/drop function kept giving me errors about file size limits. I probably didn't need to reduce the file sizes but I discovered the issue after the fact. They previewed okay so I used them anyway. I did wonder about post count limits but couldn't find written evidence of that.

FWIW, last winter I spent a large amount of time fighting through vanos solenoid issues; solenoids stuck open, failed MOV, etc. I did get it sorted thanks to this board. I wanted to give back and noticed an information hole regarding the mirrors. That said mine still don't work which is frustrating to say the least, but I think I'm closer now.
 
#19 ·
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#21 ·
#24 ·
Without disassembly, or a picture that may be hard to answer. There are 3 screws that attach the mirror wing to the rotation assembly. Picture attached. The black "wing" is where your glass and painted housing attach. If 1 or more of your screws were lose that would cause your mirror to be lose at the joint where it pivots on the car. Broken or omitted spring washers inside the assembly might cause that too.

The attached picture is mirror folded in position minus the painted cover, mirror glass, and the pan/tilt motor assembly.
 

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#23 ·
Success!

Finally figured this out, my mirror works now.

My problem outlined above in many words, turned out to be the relay position. When you switch the new cage out you have to remove the relay from the wiring harness. When I reattached the relay, it wasn't sitting low enough and was catching on the inside ribs in the plastic cup. Pictures attached with red circle where the relay was catching. This was stopping my mirror half way in it's folding.

After goofing with relay positioning for 30 minutes I realized there was no reason the relay had to be on the motor, so I relocated it to the door panel and pulled a new wire out to the motor. Works like a champ.

A side note, my original gearing was more worn than I originally thought, I ended up using the new motor and all the new gearing from the kit. The long shaft gear wouldn't fit into my gear plate/lid, I checked diameters with some calipers and found one of the stub shafts to be slightly over sized. I fixed this by chucking the gear in my drill and some 220 grit sand paper. Just a few seconds of polishing and it dropped right in and turned freely by hand.

The other thing I noticed was the ring gear inside the black cup had a rough spot in it. The cup only rotates 90 degrees, so I used some pliers to push the backing plate/spring down, and I rotated the gear 180 to provide a fresh gear mesh load zone. Not sure that was needed, but I wanted to give it the best chance possible.



Summary:
Rebuild kits online labeled for X5 / E46 / Some Range Rover and Jeeps DO have compatible parts.
Confirmed Compatible parts include:
- Motor cage (broken alignment pins are common on E39)
- Motor with attached worm gear
- Long and Short gears

Suspected compatible parts:
- Black plastic cup for ring gear
- Outer metal housing (the bolt holes on my housing are drilled but not tapped, they would need to be tapped prior to use)

Not Compatible:
- "Lid" the metal plate where the gears are installed. X5 has a different bolt pattern for attaching to the vehicle.


Parts I used:
- New motor cage
- New motor and worm gear
- New long shaft gear
- new short shaft gear

Additional work completed for operation:
- Check dimensions of gear shafts, found long shaft to be oversized and used sand paper to polish for fitment
- Relay position on motor cage is critical, I moved my relay to the space inside the door panel and pulled 1 new wire from the relay out to the motor. Relay does not fit through mirror stalk on door frame. I snaked the harness through first, then soldered relay afterward. Relay DOES fit through hole in pillar, so I fed it into the pillar with the harness plug when re-installing on car.
 

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#45 ·
my original gearing was more worn than I originally thought, I ended up using the new motor and all the new gearing from the kit. The long shaft gear wouldn't fit into my gear plate/lid, I checked diameters with some calipers and found one of the stub shafts to be slightly over sized. I fixed this by chucking the gear in my drill and some 220 grit sand paper. Just a few seconds of polishing and it dropped right in and turned freely by hand.

The other thing I noticed was the ring gear inside the black cup had a rough spot in it. The cup only rotates 90 degrees, so I used some pliers to push the backing plate/spring down, and I rotated the gear 180 to provide a fresh gear mesh load zone. Not sure that was needed, but I wanted to give it the best chance possible.
ug when re-installing on car.
I've finally got round to stripping down my passenger door mirror as I had the door card and seals off to get to the window glass.

This side mirror usually works fine but thought I'd take a look and now have all the innards sitting on my desk! The original gears still look pretty good and the pattern gears in the Boss kit look very shoddy so no way I'll be swapping my originals out. The only thing that makes me wonder is the gear ring in the black cup is a different shade where the gear engages so thinking about rotating that but when you say it only moves 90 degrees I think it moves more like 180 degrees (although I haven't put it all back together yet) so am I getting confused with how the different cups fit together?
 
#27 ·
Really terrific work, thanks for the detailed photos and explanations. My mirrors fold in and out properly most of the time (they're set to fold in when ignition turned off & open out when ignition turned on).

I'd always assumed the gears must be worn but don't get any bad noises, one will just not open occasionally until I give it a little nudge so will order the kit and take a look.

There have been plenty of people moaning about their mirrors in the past so I'd think this will help a number of people ?


Sent from AutoGuide.com Free App
 
#28 ·
Just ordered the repair kit from Amazon, the door window rubber needs replacing so an ideal time to look at the mirror when I do that. I know one of the 3 torx bolts holding the mirror assembly to the door is rounded as well so this might not be as straight forward as I'd like.
 
#41 ·
Thanks for taking the time to post this! My drivers side mirror goes up half an inch, then stops and stays there, doesn’t come back down either. If I help it by hand it works fine. A few years ago I bought a kit on Ebay, it’s just the 2 gears because that was all you could get back then. I still haven’t gotten around to take it apart and fix it but it’s good to know more parts are available now.



It’s got my vote! :M5thumbs::M5thumbs:
 
#34 ·
Great find as I'm always a fan of repairing instead of throwing something away, but I'm curious on why not just replace the unit with an aftermarket one off eBay. Seems the power folding mirrors with out memory are about $200. With the repair kits costing north of $60 a side, I figure maybe save yourself the trouble of just gutting out the aftermarket folding assembly and replacing it with your existing one? It's about $60 more to repair both sides with it the hassle.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#39 ·
Thanks a ton for a very valuable DIY.

I have a quick (hopefully) question. I swapped the mirror housing, glass, everything. The casing and everything are fully intact.

The problem is the mirror is shaking. When I close the door or when driving on uneven surface the mirror is shaking. Not very bad, but noticable. Even when coming at 100+ mph is shaking.
What could be causing this?
 
#43 ·
The whole thing is shaking? Just the glass? Sounds like something is broke/loose in the assembly. There are some pictures earlier in the thread of various stages that may help guide you. Unfortunately there's quite a bit going on inside the mirror, if it were me I'd start taking it apart to investigate.



I need a little more advice:
My driver's mirror is currently 'clicking' for about 3-5 seconds when it returns to normal position.
I want to confirm that if I buy the first kit listed above, that it has the parts to fix this problem with clicking when it returns to normal position? Any insight on this?
It might. That sounds like the motor continues to run after the mirror has stopped it's movement, I would venture to say either an alignment pin on the cage has an issue or the gears are worn enough to allow them to jump teeth. There is a hard stop in the assembly and the motor stops based on high amps once the mechanical stop is reached. There isn't a position control, so once the mechanical stop is reached the teeth are jumping. I would guess alignment pin.




Anyways, got the motor assembly apart and none of the aligning pins were broken off and my existing gears looked great, so I figured the motor was just getting worn out. Decided to start by only replacing the motor. Well, the old gears don't mesh well with the new and the new motor would not sit correctly because of that. If there was a way to swap the gear on the motor itself, I probably could have gotten it to work. Tried using the new long and short gears as well, which required sanding one end of the long gear as estreetgt mentioned, but I couldn't remove enough material all the way up to the gear, so it wouldn't insert into the lid quite far enough to mesh well with the motor gear. Ideally it needs to be machined down, or possibly drill a larger hole in the "lid". At that point I was probably 4 hours in and just said screw it and reinstalled all the old stuff with fresh grease. I think cleaning out all the old grease and using new helped a little bit. The mirror folds and unfolds, it's just a little slow. Previously it would sometimes stop halfway.
An issue I'm noticing based on this thread and the FB group is that the rebuild kits seem to have quite a bit of variability in them. One issue is the gears are cast instead of machined, but quality control in general seems to be suspect. That's going to make DIY frustrating and what works for some may not work for others. Maybe I got lucky, data point of 1.

If the factory gearing is in good shape I'd absolutely use those over anything from the kits. Mine were shot and I had to make them work. I had the same issue, mixing gears didn't work and was forced to use all the kit gears. I probably spent the better part of 3 weeks off/on until I got it working. It was highly frustrating.
 
#42 ·
Well, I hate to say it but I was unsuccessful in my attempt to install the rebuild kit from Amazon last weekend. Getting my mirror apart wasn't too bad though. These two videos are key to getting to the point of rebuilding the motor/gearing assembly.

Removing the mirror from the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0GuxqB16LU
Disassembling the mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-jVMZS65MU

Separating the motor assembly from the mirror base was rather annoying though. Mine had some kind of black silicone on the tab that holds it in. Took a while to pick off enough of it to where I could pull them apart.

Anyways, got the motor assembly apart and none of the aligning pins were broken off and my existing gears looked great, so I figured the motor was just getting worn out. Decided to start by only replacing the motor. Well, the old gears don't mesh well with the new and the new motor would not sit correctly because of that. If there was a way to swap the gear on the motor itself, I probably could have gotten it to work. Tried using the new long and short gears as well, which required sanding one end of the long gear as estreetgt mentioned, but I couldn't remove enough material all the way up to the gear, so it wouldn't insert into the lid quite far enough to mesh well with the motor gear. Ideally it needs to be machined down, or possibly drill a larger hole in the "lid". At that point I was probably 4 hours in and just said screw it and reinstalled all the old stuff with fresh grease. I think cleaning out all the old grease and using new helped a little bit. The mirror folds and unfolds, it's just a little slow. Previously it would sometimes stop halfway.

The seller did offer a full refund though, so that was nice of them. Maybe I will reattempt this at a later date if I can find a way to reuse the old motor gear. Also on the plus side, no need to worry about messing with the relay if your existing motor cage is in good shape.
 
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