Fun with side mirrors - wear on triangle piece

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Hi Folks,

I didn't see much of a reference to this in any of the forums, so I thought I would share.

I have not liked how my driver's side mirror looked for a few years. Nearly all the black paint on the triangle portion of the mirror, that bolts to the door, had come off exposing bare, scruffy cast aluminum. My options were:

1. Get a new (used) mirror assembly with triangle portion included
2. attempt to re-paint the triangle portion while on car
3. Remove and repaint while off car
4. find a used triangle portion and swap it in.

I went with #4 and found a decent triangle piece off ebay in matte black (it came in gloss as well)

Separating mirror assembly from door and triangle portion from rest of mirror is not a problem, although I did snap one of the 4 screws that hold the mirror to the triangle. What IS a problem, is that there is no obvious way to feed the electrical connection thru the triangle assembly as the opening is too small. It looks like the manufacturer did not want to sell just the triangle portion of the assembly. In fact, there is no part number for it.

The trick is to disassemble the Tyco connector that is at the door end of the mirror wiring - the end that plugs into the window switch in the door panel. Upon close inspection, there is a little tab that releases the small inner wiring connector from the outer shell of the Tyco connector. This shrinks the size of the connector that needs to be routed through the triangle connector by half, and it easily fits through..

From this point, re-assembly is a snap. To be clear, I never opened up the mirror itself or removed the color-matched cover on the back of the mirror. I think I would have broken a bunch of tabs had I done that.