After one of my China side mirrors had the support arm shear off inside the door after just 800-900 miles of driving around town, I knew that going back to the OEM side mirrors was going to be the only viable option. Because of this, I started playing around with how to refurbish these mirrors to get them looking good again.
I made sure to start out with a mirror that had a decently clean chrome panel on the front, and once I hit that with a little polishing compound, I got that shined up pretty nice. Then for the black plastic portion of the mirror, I made sure to find one where the plastic was not degraded from the sun. OK if it's faded/whitened a bit, but you just have to find one where the plastic itself hasn't started to break down/disintegrate. Here's the mirror I started with. Pretty standard junkyard part that I sourced off eBay for about $45.
Then I pulled the mirror apart. I didn't have to de-pin the connector and pull the mirror motor out of the housing to do this, but I chose to since I wanted to swap in the mirror motor from my existing mirror. Here are the pieces after I pulled everything apart and gave them a few light coats of paint. I ended up using Duplicolor bumper and trim paint since the finish most closely resembles the black plastic finish on the OEM mirrors.
Once everything had a chance to properly dry, here are the mirrors after reassembly:
And here it is installed back on the truck:
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the result. An OEM mirror that looks close to new again, and should hold up fairly well. I figure worst case, I can always hit it with another coat of bumper/trim paint if it starts to fade or look a bit worn.
