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Door mirror loose - body shop bodgery?

Tom

Tom

New member
The passenger side door mirror on my S2 has become very loose, so the entire unit is wobbling on the door. I was expecting tightening to be an easy matter of rotating the top part forward until a bolt head is exposed but what I'm seeing doesn't look right: On the driver's side I can see the top of a screw head (straight, not posidrive etc). On the passenger side there is what looks like a hex bolt head, so no way of tightening it. Can anyone confirm what should be there because I'm concerned that when I had the car resprayed, the bodyshop didn't refit with the correct bolts - I was expecting allen key heads.
 
Should be allen bolts, (5mm i think) and they should also have a small plastic dust cover that pushes on the bolt head to keep water out.
 
Oh dear, as I feared then. Question is why and how to fix it. I guess if they should be Allen bolts, there should be a captive nut or similar in the door. Since the bolt they've used can't be turned from outside the car, I wonder if the captive nut has gone. How hard would it be to get to the other end of the bolt? Hope it wouldn't mean taking the window glass out.
 
The "captive nut" is a cylindrical bar with a thread through it that the allen bolt tightens into, hard to explain... Look up the Porsche PET manual & you'll likely see an exploded diagram of the parts.
 
You may find that the original allen-head bolt was damaged or rusty and couldn't be re-used and they simply replaced it with another M5 bolt of the right length (they are long) but it happened to have a different type of head.

If the mirror hasn't fallen off entirely then the bit inside the door is probably still in place, meaning you can tighten the head with a regular screwdriver and the problem will go away.


Oli.
 
Hi Oli,
The thing is they'be put a hex head bolt on the passenger side and there is no way to tighten it because the head is entirely sunk into the hole where the Allen head would go. So the confusing thing is how they tightened this in the first place. I'm extremely p****do off but at least with the info here I can challenge them to fix it properly.
 
If I remember correctly the captive nut ( cylinder thing ) will move a bit. Have you tried using a magnet or a slim pick to see if you can get the head of the bolt above the level of the casing? As I would suspect that they body shop has simply screwed the bolt as far as they coud and then let it drop into the hole. That's why your mirror is moving about as much.
 
Thanks Colin - The bolt head is very tight in the hole - I can't pull it out and all the movement is inside the door. I think you're probably right though, the probably tightened until the head couldn't be gripped and then knocked it in the rest of the way. Looks like I'll have to get them to fix it properly.
 
Tom,

Ah, thanks for the explanation - I didn't read your post closely enough.

I'd go with Colin's explanation then. And it's shoddy workmanship and you should take it back.

Oli.
 
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