Ford B-Max Passenger side door (wing) mirror replacement
Driver of white road maintenance pick-up truck registration FJ19YDP- you are a bastard and a coward. You smashed my wing mirror whilst I was stationary in a traffic queue and then mounted the kerb to run away and avoid responsibility. I have no words.
Underneath are two small torx screws which should both come out.
The upper control panel unclips at the front bottom and then at the rear by careful levering between door card and control panel.
This just pops out
These are fixed in the metal of the door and slide into fork like fittings on the rear of the goor card using their grooves. The stud fitting itself should remain in the metal door when the panel comes off. These are located on the left hand side of the door- top and bottom.
...and then worked my way round to the right, loosening the rivets and clips and finally unclipping the panel from the window frame cladding (B pillar) and pulling the panel forward. You can see the clip connector at the top left of the door panel below
Fortunately it just popped back into the door.
Door aperture abovatnut is positioed deeper inside and cant be seen in this view. The flanged nut removed is shown below.
The door mirror is now loose but retained by its wiring loom. Sorry I had my hands full then so no photos, but the wiring emerges through the small oval rubber plug to connect at the multipin inside the door.
I tied a string to the now disconnected multiplug and pulled it back through the door as I removed the mirror. The string should let me rethread the new wire through the door more easily.
Owing to the above events I needed a replacement door mirror on the passenger side. I did try just fitting a new cover, but the forcible fragmentation of the old one also destroyed the mounting lugs so there was no way to fit it. Further the base section had also snapped and this isnt available separately.
A new Ford mirror is astronomically expensive - the whole repair being quoted around £800. My excess is £250 and given the lack of witnesses I had no chance of recovering that uninsured loss. Pattern replacement mirrors are available on ebay around £100-150 and although they are not a perfect replacement, its cheaper than stumping up £250 and the bother of a claim. That, dear reader, is how I ended up here- Im not happy and FJ19YDP is a bastard!
Ok so the task- Firstly IF you can get a used Ford mirror at a reasonable price go for it- the pattern mirrors are not as good and none have powered retraction on ignition-off. The cheapest ones are not heated either- I would go for the heated mid quality, preferably with a primed finish so you can match colour. All this is hard learned- I bought the cheapest and regretted it. The Ford mirror has 8 connections- the pattern version I got only 4, so clearly some functions will be missing. Also before you start reconcile yourself to some collateral damage. You can keep this to a minimum by investing in a proper trim removal set but as the door is largely of a click-together rigid-plastic construction, and since all the fastenings are hidden (and often mysterious in operation), you will break some in the removal process. Ill try to warn you as we go through, but buy a few in advance to replace any fastenings you break along the way.
Open the door- the trim strip is a simple remove, unclipped it with my fingers.
Once detached it hangs by its wire.
You can detach the terminal by squezing the tab on the connector and remove the panel.
Next remove the screw cover panel inside the door control handle. This is frequently shown in other cars as a small plastic button which is quite obvious. On the B-Max its not at all clear, but you need to remove the squareish (rhomboid?) cover plate on the right under the handle.
... and exposes another Torx screw beneath that needs to be removed (sorry no picture).
Next unclip the red corner reflector. You will break this as it has a clip on every side. Whichever side you choose to lever up will therefore break off. I started at the right had edge and luckily there were enough clips left for refitting. It might go better if you could push the right hand end section inwards to disengage the clip and then slide it to the left. Personally I think its meant to be a single use item and its just going to snap whatever you do.
This exposes another torx screw which needs to be removed.
Looking underneath the door card you will find one more torx screw to remove.
You've now got all the screws- the door card is held now only by the push fasteners, and I can now tell you that these are of two types- simple push rivets, embedded in the door card and which will pull out of the door with the card as it pops free. These are located in the right hand side of the door and the centre of the panel bottom.
The second type are more complex.
In addition there are I think plastic moulded tags which are part of the door panel itself and locate into holes in the metal of the door, and a number of clips along the top of the door at the window base. Finally the door panel also clips underneath the trim on the left hand side of the window frame- what would be the B pillar if this car had one.
Ok so here's what I think you need to do...
Insert your pry pliers at the bottom right corner of the panel- ie adjacent to the car. Slide them up to find the rivet connectors and pop these apart. Move up the right hand side-.
Next pull the panel away from the door unclipping the connectors below the window. Then pull the panel away from the door at the right and pivot the right-hand side upwards so that the 2 slide connectors on the left can slip out of the slots in their retention forks and the click connection to the window frame trim can be unclipped and slipped out downwards. Yes its awkward and the rules of physics are against you- but hey its a Ford- what did you expect? I didnt do this as I hadnt realised that there were two types of connector.
Ok so I didnt do this... instead I started prying from the bottom right where the slide connector is located... and broke it- goryunately not beyond use... ooops!
The card held-on pretty strongly in the top left corner because I didnt realise this was a slide fixing not a pull-out one. One of the slider rivetts did pull out of the door and had to be replaced.
The door panel is now free although there remain 2 cable connections. The first is a simple wiring multipin which just unclips from its multipin connection by pressing the tab and pulling. The second is the strange black cable- I never did identify this. However, once the electrical connector was disconnected there was enough slack in this mysterious cable to set the doorcard down and get at the mirror itself.
The mirror mounting bolt is accessed below the rubber cap in the inner door edge. Its a 14mm nut and youll need a socket with extensions to get at it comfortably. The nut is a flanged nut- I loosened it with the ratchet handle and then unscrewed it by hand using the extension bar so I could tilt it to ensure the nut remained in the socket and didnt drop down inside the door.
Comparing the old and new connectors its quite clear that the new mirror has fewer wires (4 instead of 8) but at least the connectors are the same. I threaded to new wire through the door using my pull string. The new wire comes with a fresh rubber plug which is awkward to pass through the door but with a little help it went eventually.
Old and new connectors compared below. Note also the rubber bung which is supplied prefitted to the mirror loom.
Fitting the new mirror should be straight forward except that I found it wouldn't sit flush on the door. This I eventually traced to some of the metal protrusions/location guides being too long. I had to file these down to obtain a better (but not a perfect) fit.
Refitting the door panel was pretty much the reverse of dismantling it except that I did try to refit by the tilt and slide method. It worked, but its not easy and took a fair bit of fiddling.
Overall - well, the new mirror is in. Its black, not colour-matched and the fit to the door isnt seamless. It does adjust and the indicator works. I don't seem to be able to get quite the same range of adjustment, although its adequate and will certainly meet any MOT standards.
Bit of a mixed result really. Im keeping the old mirror since its workings are fine and it does have the powerfold in function. It may eventually be possible to combine the pattern part casing with the genuine Ford workings but thats a project for another time.
Note added in proof
Mirror supplied from Lithuania (eBay advert) turned out to be for a LHD car! Hence mirror angle is set wrng at the factory. I may try modification as above or just give in and get a used Ford mirror.
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