1989 S13: Replacing side mirror glass

[K]

Last week, the glass from the passenger side mirror fell of my S13. No biggie, it had a good 18 year run, so if the glue that held it on wants to call it quits now, i can't really say much. I ordered a new one from Courtesy Nissan, which came in Thursday. Aside from now having that jackass "Object in mirror" blah blah blah... crap written on it, it looks pretty much identical to the piece that fell off.

My question is, how the hell do you snap the new piece on without breaking it?

The back of the replacement piece has five push on snap clasps and of course i want all five to snap in correctly, otherwise it could fall of again. This requires putting pressure on the glass in front of all five snaps. I suppose if you were to apply gradually increasing, but exactly equal, pressure across the entire surface area it would just snap in. This is much easier said than done however.

I've already broken one $30+ replacement glass, so i'm looking for advice on how to deal with the next one.

I do plan on having someone hold the mirror adjustment knob on the inside of the car, in a stable position next time. That should help to some degree, but if anyone out there has any other ideas or tricks, i'm wide open to suggestions.

Thanks,K

[masticatingcow]

I do plan on having someone hold the mirror adjustment knob on the inside of the car, in a stable position next time.

No tricks from me, but that sounds like a good way to break the adjustment knob.

[K]

No tricks from me, but that sounds like a good way to break the adjustment knob.

Thanks, that's a good point.

Someone on another list mentioned just taking the new glass out of the new plastic frame, getting the new frame snapped into place and then re-glue the glass into the new plastic frame.

When purchased, they come as an assembly, stuck together with some white putty. I may just try to remove the glass (assuming that i can do THAT without breaking it too) and go that route.

K

[masticatingcow]

Yeah, that's what we did with my buddy's FC. The glass had fallen away from the plastic, so we took epoxy to it and called it a day. That might work for you.