The glass on the interior rear view mirror was not looking good. This is on a later USA Car -- so the stem is satin silver metal finish with a black mirror frame. I understood that the new mirrors would be all black including the stem, so did not want that and I understood that changing-out just the glass is not viable on these mirrors as they are not built like the 230sl mirrors.
So I found a used black mirror with a satin silver metal finish stem. When compared to my original stem, the replacement mirror stem was much longer. I thought since it had the silver metal stem, and not the newer black stem, it would be the same as the Pagoda Silver stem, but no, I guess Mercedes used the silver longer stem on other models.
It was time to swap stems --- I read on our forum to gently heat the socket area with a heat gun and pop out the stem. This method worked perfectly -- didn't take much heat and it made a huge difference in how easily it poped out of the socket compared to not using heat. Re-inserting the swapped stems into the sockets was also quite simple with a little heat -- again, much easier than without heat.
Thanks to those who described the method for yanking the mirror off the car, using a little heat, and how to re-install in the car. Much head-scratching and time saved.
A photo of the two stems --- the shorter is the pagoda stem. Also a photo of the stem installed in the replacement mirror.
