rrankins

Is it possible to take the internals from one side mirror housing and put them into another?
I had a deer take off the passenger side mirror on my 2010 GS and I was lucky to find a brand new replacement on Ebay for $100. It was unpainted, so it has the basic matte black plastic finish to it. I installed it on the car as is until I get rest of the deer damage repaired, and now I like how the unpainted black mirror looks on my Velocity Yellow GS (plus, I don't have to worry about chips showing!)
I'd like to get an unpainted mirror for the driver's side as well, but haven't been as lucky finding an unpainted one on Ebay yet. Brand new, the whole unit with digital audio and auto dimming is over $500!

However, I'm seeing basic unpainted driver side mirrors without XM and the auto-dim glass going for less than $100 on Ebay.
Would it be possible to buy one of those units and swap the "guts" from my current mirror into the unpainted mirror housing?
It seems like it would be possible, but the one tricky point is it looks like in order to replace the mirror glass/motor/cables/etc. in the mirror housing, I'd have to remove the round spring clip that holds the 2 parts of the mirror housing together (at the swivel point) and from what I've seen, you can't remove that clip without destroying it.

Is that spring clip a standard type of clip I could get at a hardware or auto parts store, or could I get just the spring clip part from a dealer?

Thanks,
Ray

SilverScorp

I did this when I replaced my stock mirrors for APR carbon fiber mirrors. You cannot replace that metal clip. In fact, it has to be drilled out to remove the inner parts. Once the metal clip is drilled out the stock mirrors cannot be assembled again. The clip is not available as a single part and you would have to buy the whole mirror assembly again. Hope this helps.

rrankins

Darn - that's what I was afraid of. GM seems to like to force us to replace an entire assembly when we only need a single inexpensive part.

I take it with the APR carbon fiber mirrors, it comes as just the mirror housing pieces unassembled and you use the internals from your existing mirror assembly?
Do they include the spring clip that is needed?

I wonder if there is any other company out there that might sell the empty unfinished mirror housings for the C6?

ButWhatDoIKnow

Could you have them both wrapped in black?, perhaps with clear protection over that?

rrankins

Don't really see a need to have them wrapped, especially when the plastic for the unpainted mirror assembly is already the perfect matte black finish that looks great.
I'm trying to find a more economical way to get an unpainted mirror housing for the driver side to match the one I have on the passenger side.