How it all started
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In the fall of 2014 the retraction feature on the driver’s side mirror on my wife's 2007 Escalade quit working. Naturally I called the Cadillac dealership and asked for the price of a replacement mirror. After learning the price I knew there had to be an alternative to paying almost $1000.00 for a new mirror. I searched the internet including YouTube for days looking for different ways to fix the broken mirror but didn't really know what was broken and why it had stopped working.
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At this point I decided it was time to learn more about the mirror and its internal components to see if there was a more affordable alternative. I started with listening to the mirror when the fold button was pushed. I could hear a small electric sound/vibration coming from inside the mirror and it would slightly wiggle at the start of the sound. At this point it was obvious the mirror would need to come off the truck if any real progress was going to be made. Once the mirror was removed I took it to the workbench and began disassembling it with removal of the covers. You must be careful when doing this (if you are a DIYer) because the plastic clips and tabs become brittle over the years and break quite easily. I learned the hard way. Once it was open, I could see that it wasn’t going to be easy. The mirror assembly is complex and a fairly ingenious design. It's made up of a a metal base, a plastic frame, a spring loaded motor housing, the glass, a wiring loom and the covers.
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After some inspection, I figured out how to completely disassemble the entire unit and make my way to the sealed motor. It was clear that this unit was NOT designed to be serviced as the unit was a press fit metal clamshell that houses the spring loaded rotation mechanism along with the gears and the electric motor. Once I had it open, I found the culprit. A small plastic spur gear about the size of two dimes stacked together. This spur gear is threaded onto a metal worm gear that is then driven by the electric motor. The electric motor has a copper shaft with a worm gear carved into it. The copper worm gear is mated to the plastic spur gear and that is how the mechanism drives the mirror in and out. Over time the plastic becomes brittle and ultimately either cracks or the threads strip. In my case the gear was cracked and few teeth were missing so I began a search for a replacement gear. That search was short as I stated previously the unit was not intended to be serviced nor is there anything that resembled a part number. With my mirror completely torn apart in the garage I tried to find a manufacturer that would make a gear for my use. The attempt was futile as every place I looked wanted steep setup charges or huge minimum quantities or both. At this point I knew I had to get the mirror back on the truck for my wife to drive but I still had no solution. I was faced with buying a new mirror or a used one from eBay or junk yard or putting back on the truck broken. None of these were good options. Then I had one final idea.....I decided to try to repair the gear that I had removed from the mirror. I found the best epoxy I could find, glued it back together and waited for it to cure. Once this was done, I carved a few new teeth into the epoxy to simulate the missing teeth that had been chewed off during operation.
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Of course I had no idea if it would work or if it would last but I really didn’t want to spend a grand and finding a matching mirror on eBay or thru a junkyard proved more difficult than I thought it would be. Furthermore, there’s no telling how long the used mirror would work until it suffered the same fate. I put it all back together and the dang thing worked........for about 3 months until it grenaded inside the housing again.
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Fast-forward 9 more months when I became agitated with the entire situation again. It’s one thing for the mirror retraction feature to not work, Its quite another for the mirror glass to vibrate while rolling down the highway and that’s exactly what happens when the gear is broken. When the spur gear is broken, it no longer sits flush against the copper driveshaft from the motor. With that small amount of play, you get a mirror that vibrates at highway speeds and renders just about everything blurry when looking in it.
Enough was enough. This time I left the mirror on the truck and began looking for a way to source a gear again. This time i was fortunate to run across a guy who makes a lot of parts for the VAG group. VW, Audi and others. I was driving an Audi S8 and the time and I was familiar with his excellent work. His company is http://www.gruvenparts.com/ Paul and I worked on the design of the part for a few months and ultimately ended up with a part that exceeds the original design in both design and material composition. After a few prototypes and rounds of redesign, we finally arrived at the final product which is now available for sale.