Guest Post: W210 E430 – Replacing Exterior Mirror Rubber Seals
Editors Note: This is part four in a series by Nick Gruzevskis about owning a W210 430. The previous instalment can be found here.
I’m beginning to feel a sense of satisfaction, given that I’ve fixed a lot of small but annoying issues myself. My confidence has grown over this time, even though several of the parts I’ve used have been non original, as the original parts are no longer available. One of these jobs was to replace the left and right exterior mirror rubber seals. These seals were only on the pre-update W210 chassis, later with the update model, Mercedes changed the whole exterior mirror assembly.
Looking online, there’s no part number available for rubber seal. This makes more sense when you’ve removed the mirror, as the rubber seal boxes around the electrical cables. After communicating with W210 owners on a global W210 Facebook group, the consensus was the aftermarket rubber seals available on Amazon, Temu, Ebay is a good replacement but need some small modifications. I ordered a set on Amazon for $40 delivered. They came in two packets, one that said LH and the other RH.
Removing the mirror was quite straightforward, with a clip and three screws that needed removal. There are plenty of videos on YouTube demonstrating removal. Upon removal you can see how cracked and hardened rubber seal has become.
Looking at the replacement seal, I needed to cut two holes, one for each connector (apologies I didn’t take a photo, so displaying photo of replacement part, unmodified). Then
it’s just a matter of installing the new rubber seal and attaching mirror to vehicle.
I was impressed with the results; it just about looks like it’s a factory replacement. BTW, the replacement rubber seals also work for W202 and W140 chassis vehicles.
Author: Nick Gruzevskis is a contributor to classicjalopy.com, and the custodian of a great collection of classic and modern cars. Links to some his other articles can be found here
