Busted side mirror, maybe not
 

It's a very windy day today and my wife took our two week old Q5 to the supermarket. She comes out, loads her bags, and starts driving. Notices a strange clang and scraping sound on the passenger side. Pulls over in the lot and finds the mirror popped out and hanging. Presses it in and drives home.

I start looking at it and the two halves of the mirror unit shell are loose. I touch the upper shell and the mirror falls back out. I take a close look at things inside and don't see any signs of broken plastic. I have my wife hold the mirror while I snap the shell together and then snapped the mirror back in. Test the mirror and it looks like everything works.

I guess someone pulled up on the passenger side and lost control of their door when the wind got it. Their window must have hit the mirror just right and popped it apart. I found a small ding just above the crease in the lower door. They must have freaked out and moved somewhere else in the lot. Nice.

So, what are the odds that nothing is really damaged and the mirror will stay together? Seems like a freak thing to pop it apart so perfectly, but they don't build cars the way they used to. I had a side mirror get smacked on our MDX and a connector got completely snapped off. Anyone have a similar experience?

The two halves of the mirror is probably just snap together, as long as its not loose, it should be fine. Use a little bit of force to try to pull them apart, if it stays put, then its snap together tight.
As a side note, most of the dents I have gotten in the pass happened on a windy or rainy day, people are in a rush to get into their car because of the rain or the wind catches the door just right when they are getting in. I always try to park further out on rainy or windy days, even though thats probably time I rather park closer.

A deer blundered into the side of the Q5 some time ago. It knocked the housing of the side mirror apart. If you remove the mirror itself, there are screws that hold the halves together. The deer's impact knocked a few screws off, so you might wasn't to check that too.

Dad was driving his Q and backed into a spot next to a pillar. Wasn't looking, caught the mirror on the pillar and the thing just exploded. He gathered the pieces, took it to Audi, they put it back together no problem.

Hmmm.... I didn't see any screw holes missing screws. The screws hold the base unit to the door mount?

Dismantling mirror?
 

Does anyone have a picture of a dismantled mirror assembly, or a schematic of how it's put together or directions on how to remove the assembly?


LMS

I guess the moral of the story is; park on the side facing into the wind if possible so doors slam shut instead of fly open.

Not the most useful post I ever made!

My wife hates that I park far away from other cars all the time. I reminded her that my strategy would have prevented this problem. As usual, this scored zero points with her.

Well, get her to fix the mirror, that will get your point across :) :)

Nope, sorry, my description wasn't that clear. The mirror housing itself is two parts. These screws hold them together. With the mirror off, there are 3 or 4 screws at different points around the power mirror mechanism. That deer just knocked these two parts off - it didn't remove the whole side mirror off the car.