All,

My 2011 Mazda 3 was side-swiped yesterday. A line of paint was removed from the back cover of the passenger side mirror. Does anyone know how much this would cost to replace and/or re-paint? It makes sense to have something like this touched over, but I'm the type of person willing to spend a bit more to replace the entire unit. It's a brand new car - 5 days in and I'm alreading having to touch it up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I plan on stopping by the shop after work.

 

Made it to the shop after work. A little compound was able to get rid of a majority of the mark, but a few (2) chips remain. The guy is asking $80 to have this painted over.

 

No thoughts? I'm new to this - any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Is it just the painted cover or is the black housing itself? Is anything broken or just the scratch?

Drop an email to Jason from onlinemazdaparts and he should be able to give you the price/part number for just the painted cover. I'm not sure how much it would be, but on the 1st gen I think it would be much less expensive than repainting.

 

Thanks very much for your input. The strach is on the silver coating of the housing, not the black frame that edges it. Nothing is broken. I'll heed your advice and contact Jason for an estimate. Is it possible to replace just the silver cover? I want to avoid replacing the whole unit as that would involve removing the door panel - so I'm told. I'm going to try and take a few snap shots of the damage and post them on here.

 

Hopefully he'll be able to source just the cover for you.

Incidentally unless the 2nd gen is way different from the 1st gen you certainly don't have to remove the door panel. The process on the first gen is:
-pop off the triangular panel (where the tweeter is mounted if you have them)
-unplug the harness
-remove three bolts
-pull housing off of the car.