[MR2] MkII Rear View Mirror Help

[Ken Blake]

Hi James,
        It's usually the screws on the outside of the car, on the underside of the mirror that are at fault. Unfortunately,
they are a soft metal, and Toyota installed them using Loc-Tite. I have helped several of the local owners fix their shaky
mirrors, after repairing my own, using SS button-head Allen screws. The screws were so tight on one of the cars, we used a
dremel with a cut-off wheel to make a slot across the head of the screw, then used a large slotted screwdriver to remove the
screw. IMS, the screws are either 4mm or 5mm thread.

HTH,

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: mr2-bounces at mr2.com [mailto:mr2-bounces at mr2.com] On Behalf Of James
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 10:54 PM
To: mr2 at mr2.com
Subject: [MR2] MkII Rear View Mirror Help

While I've my MkII interior stripped for reupholstering and running wires for some new electronics, with the door panels off,
I figured it would be a good time for taking care of my wobbly rear view mirrors - which I found annoying.  One of the MR2
sites even had a tip on how to fix this problem...even though it wasn't very helpful.  These mirrors are of the
OEMelectrically adjustable, folding type.

In part, one of the problems is that one or more of the four previous owners of car had messed with a few things, including
trying to force the wrong screws with mismatched threads into their threaded holes.

Here's where I went down a bad path though: Most of the wobbling was at the mirrors' hinged joint.  The mirror stem attaches
to the door with four screws, and then there's two more screws accessible in the underside of the mirror stem which screw into
the hinge that's attached to the mirror body.
I noticed that when I wobbled the mirror bodies, there was relative movement between those two screws and the mirror stem.  I
took the right side mirror off, and tried to tighten those screws...but no dice, they were frozen tight.  So I soaked them
with penetrating oil, and still no luck.  So I figured I'd just drill them out and try to find some appropriate replacement
screws.  Bad move; the screw shanks are still stuck tight in the in the hinge.  I guess if I could figure out how to get the
mirror body apart, I could drill out the shanks and re-tap the holes.

Anybody have any experience with rebuilding these things?  I imagine they're probably no longer available new.

James