Wobbly rear-view mirror fix (Toyoda, WTF were you thinking??!!)

[scottm]

I've been battling this, but it became more serious when my window was replaced twice recently and will be replaced again next week (another sad story of WTF).

The first step was the tiny screws that the installer buggered and re-buggered, replaced them with flathead M3x6mm socket-head.

Next the silver spring with 5mm threaded boss needed to be flattened a bit to tighten things up. But first I had to clean out the black windshield adhesive that I told the installer not to put in there.

Flattened the spring a bit, put it in, reassembled.

 

[scottm]

The mirror ball-mount has a very special looking captive screw with a point on the end. I'm not at all sure what the point of it is, a simple screw should work there.

 

[scottm]

So after tightening the whole thing together, it's still wobbly, what a chitty design.

I happened to be in a machine-shop, so I cut a piece of 1/8" steel to fit in the windshield mount, tapped a 5mm hole where the boss was, it seemed to fit. I put that behind the windshield mount.

 

[scottm]

I needed a longer screw. The M5x24mm screw was too tight through the mirror ball mount, it threaded itself through, so I opened up to a clearance hole with a #8 drill bit.

And all is tight now, ready for a test-drive.

Hopefully this isn't too confusing for the windshield guy, but luckily the body shop where he screwed it all up is super pissed at how he left my truck, insists he re-do it in their shop to their liking. Windshield guys don't care what joe-consumer thinks of their work, but they don't want a body shop pissed at them.

 

[scottm]

My contraption kept coming loose, I finally put thread-locker on the screw, medium-strength. It hasn't come loose in a week, maybe that fixed it.

 

[badlander]

scottm,
That looks like a good fix. Luckily mine is still tight, never been taken off.....yet. Still on original windshield.
Good idea with the plate behind the mount. No danger of tightening up too tight and maybe cracking something.
Thanks for posting this.

 

[DLong]

My truck's windshield was replaced by the scummy dealership we purchased it from and, possibly as a result, I had a wobbly rearview mirror like the OP, annoying as the Lexus IS350 we had traded in had a cronically vibrating mirror (well known issue with that uninspiring vehicle). The difference was that I noticed that the whole assembly was loose instead of just the mirror body. I attempted to tighten the mounting screw and found it to be very tight already. I assumed that the windshield folks had left out a washer or two on the side of the head of the screw so added some Lowes-sourced washers and some double-sided adhesive foam between the mirror plate and windshield which all seems to have fixed the issue.

- Dan