Smashed my mirror while reversing

[torbach]

I was reversing out of my garage when running late and smashed my passenger mirror. It broke a part of the external mirror cover. The mirror itself still works fine. But there is a lot of wind noise. The part can't be replaced without replacing the entire mirror mechnism which costs $960 just for the part prior to installation and painting. So for now, I'm probably going to try to fill this in with epoxy. Any thoughts/suggestions?

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[3.3Turbo4me]

Ouch how much is your insurance deductible?

There's a used one on ebay right now for $350
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2018-KIA-S...284576?hash=item4682176f20:g:EEoAAOSwuMNbZHL5

 

[torbach]

Ouch how much is your insurance deductible?

There's a used one on ebay right now for $350
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2018-KIA-S...284576?hash=item4682176f20:g:EEoAAOSwuMNbZHL5

Thank you so much. I'll go get that. My deductible is $1k, but also, my insurance rate will go up because my wife was in a fender bender that was her fault recently, so we lost our "accident forgiveness" clause.


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[torbach]

I got the one from eBay. At that price it's a no brainier. Thank you again so much. I'll probably try to install it myself if I can figure he videos on doing that. If not, I'll take it in to get a quote.
Cheers!


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[3.3Turbo4me]

Thank you so much. I'll go get that. My deductible is $1k, but also, my insurance rate will go up because my wife was in a fender bender that was her fault recently, so we lost our "accident forgiveness" clause.


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No problem glad I can help. Might as well take some pictures of the swap process for us too lol.

 

[slammered]

Damn that sucks, glad you scored a deal on the replacement part

 

[CKeeler]

Dang. I’ve done that before with a previous car. Got real close to doing it with my Stinger once. It totally sucks. Glad you got a discount on one

 

[robz32]

I got the one from eBay. At that price it's a no brainier. Thank you again so much. I'll probably try to install it myself if I can figure he videos on doing that. If not, I'll take it in to get a quote.
Cheers!


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Should be a pretty easy install, once the door panel is removed you'll have to remove black, sound isolator, panel and then you will be able to locate the mirror mounting points on the door. Mirror is held by two 10mm screws.

 

[torbach]

Should be a pretty easy install, once the door panel is removed you'll have to remove black, sound isolator, panel and then you will be able to locate the mirror mounting points on the door. Mirror is held by two 10mm screws.

Thanks. I'll see what I can find online for that once I get the part. I do have the parts needed to remove the door panel, although I want to be careful not to get close to anything side airbag related.


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[CajunStinger]

Ouch sorry to see that. Let us know how the repair goes.

 

[MurlinatoR]

Dang. I’ve done that before with a previous car. Got real close to doing it with my Stinger once. It totally sucks. Glad you got a discount on one

I always back into my garage so that I'm pulling out when I'm in a hurry. LOL

 

[upstatedoc]

dang, how fast do you guys back up? put it in reverse and mash the pedal?

 

[torbach]

We'll, it turns out the mirror I purchased from eBay doesn't have all of the features. It's not heated and it doesn't automatically fold. So the fitting for it's electrical is different. I guess I'll try sell it.


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[torbach]

I ended up taking apart the eBay mirror to see if I could figure out a solution. It worked, albeit not without its issues:

1. Bend the mirror inside it’s container with the outside end sticking out as far as you can.
2. Snap the mirror glass off (this is tricky and I had to pull hard. It worked on the eBay mirror. It broke the mirror glass on my GT2.
3. The mirror glass has between 3 (GT) to 5 (GT2) electric wires connecting it to the rest of the mirror body.
3. I removed these wires. Each has a bracket on its end or a metal sheeth and snaps off or slides off.
4. I could visibly see around 7 screws holding the mirror surround in place and removed them in the eBay mirror. This split the mirror housing into 4 distinct parts, the top, which comes straight off, the indicator lamp (also connected via a single, easy to detach connector), the bottom/base which is connected to the car directly and houses most of the electronics, the mirror motor, etc, and finally, the part that is right in front of the mirror and holds all the top, indicator lamp, and bottom together.
5. That last part and the indicator lamp were the two components that were broken in my case.

So after discovering all this, I repeated the procedure on the mirror in my car. That’s when my mirror broke while I was trying to remove it. So in reassembling it with the 2nd hand mirror parts, I had to cut the 5 input connector from my GT2 mirror glass off, connect the correct 3 wires from the eBay mirror to that using waterproof screw on wire connectors, and reassemble everything to the bottom mechanism of my existing mirror.

The final result is that my mirror now looks new. Everything works except the heating of the mirror. The blind spot etc works fine. The only remaining issue I have is a loud whistling noise once I get past around 40mph. I believe when I first tried to just replace the entire unit, and took off the driver door trim, I must have not assembled it back properly near the car door window. I’ll try to figure that out.


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[Danny_O]

Glad it somewhat work. Any pictures of the results?

 

[torbach]

Bottom half only:

Adding the top part back:

Adding in the broken surround that was replaced:

Rear of the now broken OEM GT2 mirror with the 4 wires:

Front of the now broken OEM mirror:

New mirror in place:

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[torbach]

Long time no update. So after I "fixed" the mirror, the shrilling wind noise stayed and was really bad from around 40mph and up. I couldn't figure out what it was.

I took it in and they finally figured it was the rubber gasket between the mirror and the car body. The crash damaged that gasket (see photo) and it was letting air in. They only way they could replace this was (drum roll....) a brand new mirror at $980.... Since I still had the remaining parts of the $300 eBay mirror, I took the rubber gasket from that and asked them to install it. It wasn't perfect, but was better than the one in the picture. They installed it and the wind noise is unfortunately still there, but only at speeds higher than 55mph and much quieter. I'll live with it for a while until I give in and get a whole new mirror, or Kia decided to sell just the gasket. It should be no more than a $40 item.

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[DodgetoKia]

$980 is insane. Glad it's some what fixed.

 

[CKeeler]

That’s an insane amount of money. But, then again, side mirrors on new cars are getting more and more complex. I had to replace the mirror on my wife’s Milan. Luckily I found an aftermarket one on eBay for $60. I’d say deal with the whistling until the aftermarket prices come down

 

[Chris71]

Can you take a pic of your passenger mirror and draw an arrow where the air is going through and making noise, I think we can come up with a simple solution to fix it


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