Spent a good part of Saturday working on the Mrs. MDX. As mentioned earlier I had the following issues to attempt to remedy:
-Passenger side mirror was broken internally. Got a used replacement in the same color.
-Passenger rear blind spot detector was broken. Got very used and questionable one from same yard as mirrors.
First to tackle was the passenger mirror. Mine was tossed in the passenger seat and sat in the junked car for who knows how long. Had a couple more scratches than I wanted too. This is a stock photo as i didn't take pictures of this part. Its hard mounted to the door, so I had to remove interior panels to swap it out. It wasn't too hard to remove as there is a YouTube video I referenced. Installed the used one and fired up the car. Everything worked! One job completed.
Finally it was time to tackle the radar sensor. Luckily I didn't have to remove the entire rear bumper, but I had to take a bit of the passenger side lose to access the mounting point. My wife broke off 2 of the 3 hard mounting point for the sensor during the accident. After removing it from the car the sensor looked much like the used replacement, but you could see a light smudge across the face of the sensor. That is where it made direct contact with my trucks front tow hook. The harness also seemed to come off a little too easy, so i plugged it back in and fired her up, just to be sure. Nada, sensor not registering. Then I got to thinking about how Jeff said they needed to be calibrated, especially if the harness was ripped off.
I decided to quickly install the new sensor and see if it would act the same. Nope, it fired up and the dash light went out. Ok, at least its not showing an error anymore. That doesn't mean it works when vehicles are in the other lane. That will have to wait until i fix the bracket and get it all back together.
The brackets I have available to me are either my original one in 3 pieces, or a the one from the rear ended MDX. Pictured again here:
Turns out the crashed unit I picked up was in slightly better shape than mine, but not by much. It was in one piece, but it was completely cracked through on each of the mounting points in one place. Also the bracket had been "flexed" in its current position for too long and was holding its awkward shape after being removed. It didn't want to go back to straight. What to do??? I turned to my zip tie collection and some fresh tubes of JB Weld to force it back to shape. After letting it cure and removing about 8 zip ties that held it together.
Install wasn't too bad. Hired the wife with her small hands and my youngest son to hold the important tools.
Surprisingly everything lined up pretty well with the 3 bolts and it went back together. Here is a picture shooting down in between the bumper. Had to use some stubby wrenches, but it all went back into place. Reinstalled the tail light and all the bumper bolts and had the wife take her out for a spin.
Initially she drove around the block and said it didn't recognize any of the parked cars. I had to remind her that it only detects objects moving within 6 mph of you, so ideally things that
stay in your blind spot. She took it back out on the main road and came back with a big smile on her face. It worked!
Now after over a year of the car being partly broken, its now back to being like new again.
