Driver's mirror trouble

Boy that's weird Rick. No, I haven't noticed this before but I would be interested to know how you make out. My car is being serviced at the moment and I had a somewhat related issue with my driver mirror.

In my case, someone *did* bump into my mirror and I noticed that when I returned the mirror to the fully-deployed position, the base of the mirror no longer aligns exactly with the mirror stalk on the door. My mirror is now slightly over-rotated. My passenger side mirror is perfectly aligned.

I wonder if there is some sort of stop mechanism that limits the rotation of the mirror. The mechanism itself felt spring-loaded to me. I believe the mirror is designed to fold forward or backward in case it is bumped from either direction. Therefore, its properly-deployed position would sit in between the 2 folded positions and therefore something must stop (hold) it in position there.

I'll post my service manager's comments when I get them.

 

Wow, that's another weird one, 3x with 2 cars is not good news for any of us. I wonder if mine isn't doing the same thing too. It's good that you mention your experiences.

As for your popped LED, I think you should get that headlight replaced ASAP since you never know how long these things last! (fingers crossed) But at least you'll be getting the CaliT... soon.

 

Here's some information I found out about the driver side mirror on the older Californias. The alignment of the driver side mirror appears to be consistently worse than the passenger side mirror which were all correctly aligned. 4 out of 5 randomly-selected cars at the dealer each had variously misaligned driver side mirrors. I've attached a photo of the worst offender.

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Aside from this, my service manager confirmed that there is no way to adjust the alignment of the mirror body with the stalk.

I am aghast, especially with respect to the mirror on the Grigio car. This silly part, unpainted, costs $1800 in Canada... probably only costs $200 to make. You would think they would design a simple allowance to make fine adjustments to fit an $1800 item on a C$300k car. The mirror on my car is almost as bad (grease pencil marks show up the misalignment better). What an utter waste of an otherwise good-looking design - the sculpt lines, instead of enhancing the car's looks, now only serving to show off the crappy factory fitment!

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I'm going to keep an eye on my mirror in case it starts to wander off alignment like yours. It might be interesting to see if this problem is corrected in the CaliT.

Thanks for the heads-up Rick!

 

I found this Ford YouTube video about... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIxlSa_D_uA]Resynchronization of your power-folding mirrors[/ame].

I think the "reset" refers to the motor relocating its correct detent. These things are not high-tech and I imagine they all work pretty much in a similar fashion. Apparently with the Ford mirror, just keep cycling the power mirror until it clicks back into place.

OTOH, I think the mirror alignment problem I mentioned concerns a different issue. Here's the internal of a very simple manual fold mirror I found on the net off someone's Marcos Mantis sports car (I had never heard of that one before either). The detents, spring are self-evident and you can see how the detent positioner is fastened into place with the centre screw.

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I think the problem is that service shops today seldom ever open and repair parts due to today's high labour rates. They just design parts to be swapped. Unfortunately, for Ferrari parts the economics of repairing a part vs replacing one isn't quite as clearcut.

Hope your baby gets its new "eyes" soon.

 

I've never had an issue with the mirrors, but I checked them after 4th Gear posted his pictures. Both of mine are out of alignment as he described. I have a 2011 Grigio Silverstone California.

 

My driver side is out. I guess I'll add that to my list for the next visit.

 

Boy, that's embarrassing. They owe you one.

 

So what is it with these mirrors anyway??

 

I wonder if it's just a nut that has gradually worked itself loose. It can't be a very complex mechanism, can it?

 

Hey Rick Lederman, did you ever get any additional info from your tech on how he fixed the mirror alignment?