Rearview Mirror Jigglies

VelocityYellowRules!

VelocityYellowRules!

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Jul 15, 2012
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Fairview, Alberta
VetteCoins
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2006 Z06
What a day! I thought that the methanol system had stopped working as I didn't remember the red light coming on or staying on for that long. So I took the car for a rip and gave the throttle a workout. I hit the test button and then it went from red to green and so some spirited peddle work now has it going from red to green and staying green as long as my foot is pressed.

I guess I don't get deep into the throttle often enough. Note to self!

I was so happy I went to get my mail. Got a letter from the local John Deere dealer to inform me that they had a "loss of data and your credit card may be compromised." Blah blah blah blah. So called the CC company and they cancelled my card so now I'm cardless until the new card arrives. Oh well, I get to use my debt card instead. What a pain though. I'll have to go through and now update PayPal etc. so the fun never stops around here.

John Deere could have given me a gift card for my hassles..................

ANYWAY!

I have been annoyed by my drooping rear view mirror and decided to tackle that today. I mean how difficult could it be?

I found some threads and it appears that people talk about it not being repairable and having to replace the mirror instead! WTF?

So have any of you had this problem and if so is there a not so difficult way to cure it?? Like simple for the mechanically challenged.........................

Ah GM, whatever were you thinking???????

Cheers,

Garry
 
The farming.........well the spring was about as bad or worse than the fall which was the worst ever.

Major snow and rain in April and we didn't even get out to combine what sat out over the winter until the 10th of May. Oddly the same day we finished seeding last year! Anyway we combined the canola until the 14th and guess what it rained over two inches! So we didn't start seeding until the 25th of May I think. Mudded in about 400 acres of peas and then shut it down as this was the 29th and that was much later than we'd normally try to seed. So almost like a year off sort of. Should be a breeze of an upcoming harvest too. I'm good with this though. I almost wanted a year off where my biggest challenge having to cut my grass.

Rest, recover, regroup and hit it next year!

But there were a lot of people around here seeding into early June. It is going to take divine intervention for that to mature in time before it freezes in early September. It might be OK but who wants the risk. Something on the plus side of having a small farm, being debt free, I don't have to take risks as I have some mortgage or equipment payments I have to make...................

As the Greeks say "The Gods look after the fools".......................
 
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I actually considered a dab of silicone since I could probably remove it if I wasn't ever happy with the placement.

And while some complain about the C6 stereos you may have a point. It is the only car audio I have that can make the hair on my legs quiver when it starts to get loud!!

No rain and a forecast heat wave coming on - what a year to have cut back on seeding! The Greeks are right - the Gods do look after the fools!!

Screw this, I'm going to France......................
 
I know farmers up in the north east part of the province who didn't even seed this year. Still too wet to even take last years crop off so they got permission to burn it. Not a great year for farmers in the north here either.

As for the rear view mirror, with your extra time, I'd patrol wrecking yards as the mirror would be compatible with a lot of other models, plus it let you look around to see if anything interesting is there.
 
Hi Garry.

I have the dreaded drooping/jiggling rear view mirror in my C6 vert as well. And there is a fix for it sort of.

Inside the mirror housing where it connects to the ball joint on the windshield, there are 3 small tiny pins inside that over time, distort. This is what causes the mirror to wobble. The fix is to pull the mirror off, remove those pins and straighten them out. If you can't straighten them out, it's recommended to replace those pins with something stronger so they don't distort.

Now I haven't replaced the pins yet, but I have straightened them out and it seems to hold for a few days or weeks depending on how much jarring the car takes on a daily drive. Here is a quote from that other forum.

This is a sad story with a happy ending. I got my 2007 coupe a few weeks ago and one of the first things I did was install a Great Lakes Trophy rear view mirror mount for my Valentine One along with a
Invisicord which attached from the Val 1 to the rear view mirror power cord. In any event, while I never dismounted the mirror, I did move it around on its ball joint a lot toying and playing with my install of mirror mount, Val 1 and Inviscord. Any why not? Did the same to my 2001 Monte Carlo with NO problem. But lo and behold, the Vette uses a stupidly engineered cam lock system to attach the rear view mirror to the windshield. Then my problems started. My mirror started wiggling and would not hold its position. Just like others on this forum with the same problem even though they had no detector attached to the mirror. So I took it to the dealer who told me a) there are no replacement parts for the disc held by 3 torx screws or the spring pins. You can only get a new mirror. They also told me this would not be covered under warranty because I installed that mount on the mirror. The "corvette" tech told me nothing could be done to fix it. So I ordered a new mirror for $300.00 (list price $368.00!).

Anyways, I took both mirrors today to a local place near me which installs customs parts on pickups/vans etc. Its not a garage per se and they do not do mechanical work per se. They took pity on me (not to mention they liked my 2007). They took a look at my wiggly mirror. He took a #8 Torx tool and easily unscrewed the 3 torx screws. He took the disk out along with the three pins. The pins were all bent and he took a wrench and straightened them. He put it back together. I took it out to my vette and twisted it in and voila!! its like new again with no wiggles . As a bonus, he cut a piece of black racing stripe tape and shaped it to the size of that stupid PASSENGER AIR BAG ON OFF light, put it over it and voila, that mesage is gone! Monday, the new $300.00 mirror goes back to the dealer for my money back and a good talking to the service manager!

The bottom line is the C6 mirror can take only so much swiviling on its ball joint and then that pressure gets to the cam lock which then starts to loosen up as the pins go out of whack and/or the little bumps on the disk get ground down. That really sucks. But it is fixable. So if you have the C6 rear view mirror "wiggles" just take it apart and fix it as told above, before you buy a new mirror.

Oh, I read somwhere that if you unplug your mirror and dismount it, NEVER start the car until you at least re-plug the mirror back in. If you dont, you will loose all memory of your various modules and they will all have to be reprogrammed.
Click to expand...
 
Good morning Riley,

Yep, not a good year to be a primary producer. I have a half section of wheat that I wasn't able to combine this fall as it was just too flat. But I decided not to burn it or to till it. This is actually my 25th year of zero till seeding and I didn't really feel like restarting that clock. So my current plan is to mount the coulters off my old drill (farmers never throw anything away) which are basically giant pizza cutters that will cut the lodged wheat ahead of the shanks when I go to seed in 2018.

Funny for it being so wet in April and May it is now dry, hot and horribly windy and now a heatwave is forecast to hit most of Alberta. I won't be as bad as the central and southern part but I'm sure it will do the crops a bit of no-good.

While otherwise I might be bemoaning the fact that I seeded so little this year I have never been so happy with making the decision! Sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses.

Zeeman28a, sounds like sound advice. I have read about this procedure but am just leery about removing the mirror as it apparently can be a bugger to get on and off again. Still maybe I just need to bone up on reading what I can and to see if I can find of video of someone doing this and then tackle it.

Did you find it hard to remove from the mirror from the windshield yourself or is it as easy as disconnecting the plug and twisting off (counter or clockwise BTW?). How much caution is required? I read that you have to be careful as you can just as easily damage the pins again putting the mirror back in place after removing and straightening them..................

Cheers,

Garry
 
I was leary at first as well, but once I learned how to clockwise twist the mirror off the joint, it was very easy. Just make sure to disconnect that cable first.

The pins are already damaged. Once they distort once, they can't seem to keep their shape. I've been thinking the next time I pull it off, I can going to find 3 drill bits of roughly the same diameter, cut them to the same length as those pins and replace them.
 
Good morning Zeeman28a,

Wow it is so beautiful here this morning. We've had a miserable stretch of winds day after day 35 to 50 plus km/hr which made being outside so unpleasant. But the past two days at least in the mornings 5 to 10 km/hr and 6 to 10 above which is almost perfect for exercising. I can get a good workout and not some home dripping wet.

Well that sounds simple enough, twist clockwise. Heck I mean what is the worst thing that can happen given (sadly) the amount of time I spend looking in it anyway (!). I'm curious about replacing the pins. I don't have any metal with me here but there are a number of shops in town that I'm sure I could acquire the right diameter and length from. How are you planning to fasten the replacements into place?? Epoxy? Cyano??

I'm just going to dry off and get my reading glasses, probably my headband light (for winter exercising) and go and see how much worse I can make things!

#8 torx I think I might even have on hand...................

Cheers,

Garry
 
Back from the garage..............

OK you've got to be kidding me.

It was surprisingly easy to remove. Twist clockwise 90 degrees and it comes right off. Two of the three Torx screws came out easily, the third one I had to hold the bit with a Vise-Grip as I couldn't get enough torque with the screwdriver handle.

Then I took off the cover and there they were. Not at all what I was expecting. At first I thought those things aren't bend but upon very close examination they are slightly bent, but boy I mean slightly.

Now I understand what you mean about replacing them with drill bit stems, something that is hardened and less likely to bend again in the future.

CCF and my brethren come though once again for me!

Now to see if I can find a machine shop.

I noticed as well that the pins do not fit 100% snugly in the holders so I'm also wondering if I could go a diameter larger in size too...................

Cheers,

Garry
 
P1050757.JPG P1050758.JPG P1050759.JPG So the machine shop couldn't help me with something that small but suggested perhaps a spring pin. So off to Gregg's but they didn't have something that small in a spring pin. So I'm going with the drill bit suggestion. I've acquired 3 5/64ths bits and with the cutting wheel in my dremel I'm set to cut them to size. I hope that they are slightly marginal larger in diameter as there is some play in where the pins fit. I just hope I don't rip the mirror mount off when I put it back on.

But I have to say I'm pretty excited!
 
Measure once, cut twice Garry....errrr.... or is it measure twice, cut once.... And that my friends is the extent of my mechanical ability.... lol... Sounds like you have it under control Garry... Good on ya! Keep us in the know. :thumbs:
 
It is sort of heart breaking. I cut the pins to the right size, I'm getting ready to put it back on and I realize suddenly that this is not where the problem is.............

There is a metal ring that clamps over 4 pairs of little lugs,, 3 of them have broken off and so the ring is not applying the usual pressure to hold the ball/socket assembly in place.

I think I might be f'ed on this one as I would have to get the back side of the mirror...................

I should have know something like this would happen as it was going too easy for me!!

I mean the pins are clearly bent but in my case this is not the problem, or the complete problem. You can see in the last two images the ring and lugs and where one broke off...............P1050760.JPG P1050761.JPG P1050763.JPG P1050762.JPG
 
I suspect it may be heading in that direction..............

I don't think a hose clamp would work as it would not be able to exert the pressure necessary to squeeze the socket onto the ball.

Or I could just put it into an acceptable position and superglue it into place and see how long I go without being frustrated by that as I'm sure it would be misaligned slightly.

Crushingly disappointing!
 
VelocityYellowRules! said:
It is sort of heart breaking. I cut the pins to the right size, I'm getting ready to put it back on and I realize suddenly that this is not where the problem is.............

There is a metal ring that clamps over 4 pairs of little lugs,, 3 of them have broken off and so the ring is not applying the usual pressure to hold the ball/socket assembly in place.

I think I might be f'ed on this one as I would have to get the back side of the mirror...................

I should have know something like this would happen as it was going too easy for me!!

I mean the pins are clearly bent but in my case this is not the problem, or the complete problem. You can see in the last two images the ring and lugs and where one broke off..............
Click to expand...

Damn. Next time I take mine off, I will have a closer look at that ring. Don't think I noticed that on mine. And I was hoping to hear about the drill bit idea if it would work or not.
 
Clear fingernail polish...................interesting and I actually do have some too. I was thinking that if I could thicken the surface ever so slightly it might stay in place.

I'm not sure in the end what replacing the pins did, as I don't think this is why the mirror was drooping. Having said that I had to take the car for a trip to drop it off to have a swaybar linkage piece changed and I don't recall there being any drooping. I pick it up today so on the way home I'll be careful to pay attention to the position of the mirror.

If it does droop again the fingernail polish here I go!
 
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