Saturday the 12th of November was a rather hot day in Sydney and being my car was left in the sun the whole day this was the catalyst of an all too common failure on our cars. As soon as I jumped in the drivers seat I noticed a rather large oval bubble in the rear view mirror. I decided to leave it til later that afternoon however the constant change in temperature by using the AC and fresh air sped up the process for the seals on the mirror to fail. You could hear pops/cracks throughout the day and further bubbles forming in the mirror.
Here you can see the mirror has a line through it due to an air bubble and the some of the liquid had escaped.
As soon as I got home I removed the mirror as there was a chance the chemical liquid would be rather corrosive like in the earlier BMWs which could damage interior trim = $$$$
Priced up a new mirror from Cotswold which came to 402GBP, rather steep for a mirror if you ask me so I decided to give repairing it myself a shot as autodimming wasn't a huge loss for me. Found on another forum a Z3M owner had attempted the same.
tools required:
- thin small box cutter
- medium flat head screwdriver (for pry off the mirror cover)
- painters tape
- windex
- microfibre towels
- powderless disposable gloves
- sidecutters
- araldite
Using the box cutter you gently scrape away at the adhesive and seal around the mirror (consists of two pieces of glass and the liquid inbetween). Once the two pieces are apart give them both a good clean with a clean microfibre cloth and windex as this will clean out all the residue. Make sure you take great care with this process as you don't want any annoying strands or streaks in your freshly repaired mirror. Also remove the metal conductors surrounding the pieces of glass as these will no longer be needed.
As you can see below this is where the mirror seal failed.
Once all is cleaned do the reverse and use painters tape to hold the two pieces of glass together with small dabs of araldite in key areas. Make sure you do not connect the connector behind the mirror as the autodimming feature will no longer function as the liquid has been removed.
Completed!!
