Not all car jobs are fun, I guess this classifies as such. At least it was rare in that most of the job was done on the workshop table.
One common failure point in Alfa Romeo 156 is the side-mirror turning/locking mechnism. On our black sheep, known as Wildling (Villikko in Finnish), both side-mirrors were basically flapping in the wind. On our other Alfas they've been fine, so this probably speaks more about the previous owners than the car itself. Mirror units are still available as spares, in the ballpark of 50-100€ a piece, which wouldn't be so bad, but you also need to paint them. So repair is attractive, and possible thanks to a detailed Youtube video on the topic.
The hardest part of the job is not to break anything, as there are some flimsy plastic parts and glass involved. Once disassembled, it's easy to see why the locking mechanism breaks so easily - the groove where the nails of the locking ring are supposed to go is so shallow it's barely visible under the road dust of 23 years! I suppose this is intentional in the sense that they wanted this to give up instead of shattering the surrounding plastics on smaller impacts (thinking of Italian traffic...), but maybe they went too far here.
The fix is simply pushing the spring, washer and locking ring into place with a vice. And then pray it doesn't blow up in your face during assembly because the construct looks sooooooo flimsy. For the driver side mirror, I deepened the groove just a little bit with a Dremel, and what a difference it makes! I'm positive I'll be redoing the passenger side mirror in a year or two, whereas the driver side locking ring looks snug enough for the rest of the car's life.
The first one took a while as first jobs always do because you don't quite know what you're doing, the second one was like 15min.
#alfaromeo #carrepair #diy #mechanic
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