Gen 5 mirror housing removal

First is the glass. Pry from the left and/or right side. I find I have to apply more pressure than I'm comfortable with, but the glass can take it. Biggest concern is not letting it come away from the housing too quickly. There are wires attached to the glass with adhesive on both sides. The blind spot light on the outer side, and the mirror heat connection on the inner side. Be careful to not pull the glass far enough away to pull those connections off the glass. The BSM light is a clip and easy enough to remove. The heating connection is a little tougher. Take a small screwdriver or something and work the plug upward from side to side.

Once the glass is off, there are a bunch of little place you can access that release the clips holding the mirror covers on. The top one comes off first, then the middle one. The lower-most section is part of housing itself. It's honestly a PITA, and it might be helpful to have some really good glue handy just in case. I found the best solution was to start at one end and just use feel to find where the next clip was.

You can also remove the entire mirror housing as one piece by removing the inner door panel, disconnecting the mirror wiring harness, and then removing three bolts. If you're disassembling the mirror, there are pros and cons to both ways. When it's on the car, the car effectively acts as a brace to help you when you're trying to get all those little tabs free. But by removing the whole mirror first, you can take it to a work bench and rotate the mirror any direction to give you the best angles.


I'll include a couple of the repair manual pages I downloaded when I was learning how to do it. As well as the parts diagram and part number list just in case to need to order replacements of anything.