My mirror stopped working last week. Randomly enough, it died right after going to the local car wash, which made me think that something had shorted out, probably due to someone spraying windex directly into one of the light sensor holes.

Having thought I had isolated the problem to the mirror being dead, I went ahead and ordered a replacement unit.

Taking a second look at the wiring with the multi-meter a few days later, it turned out that my ground connection was flaky. There was enough factory paint in and around the bolt hole to make the ground connection unreliable, unless the terminal connector was positioned just right. Knowing that if this didn't survive a few days on paved roads, it would never survive long term use, especially on gravel roads, I needed to find a permanent fix other then repositioning the connector and tightening the bolt

To fix this, I scraped off some paint immediately surrounding the bolt hole, and added a toothed lock washer between the terminal and the frame, before torquing down the bolt. This seems to be the permanent fix I needed, as it survived 3 days in Death Valley, with a full day on the rough gravel roads in the park.

In hindsight, the original terminal connector I removed from the ground wire had a toothed interior ring. Since the replacment connector I added had a smooth hole, I should have known to add a toothed washer in the first place.

DB.

PS: If anyone's looking for a new GENK50 mirror, look for my posting in the for sale forum. (selling the unneeded replacement I bought)