It'd be better and best to use high percentage isopropyl alcohol to clean it, as brake cleaner can make many plastics brittle or crack.

Water is fine, it's just 12v. As long as it's dried it shouldn't ruin the brushes or commutator.

 

Cleaning circuit boards under the tap is standard procedure.
Wire looms can go in the dishwasher.

Just make sure to dry it out and it’s no harm.

 

Great thanks for the tips everyone.

 

Wish I'd read this a few days ago. I just replaced my right side mirror base & actuator with a new part becuase it would not shift right or left. I had taken it apart down to pulling the motors out previously and the R/L motor would move slowly and without much power, not enough power to move the gears. If I'd found this thread then I would have tried taking the motor apart. I had tried to find a replacement motor online but had no luck. It's too bad a $5.00 motor going bad is this much trouble necessitates a $365.00 new mirror base & actuator.

My driver mirror is having the same issues so I might pull it apart and see if I can fix the motor.

 

I looked at the picture of the motor and found this, hopefully it's the right part:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262667393056

Only $3 but shipping all the way from China. I ordered 2 since the shipping ($4) was more than the motor itself.

 

I ordered this and just installed . FIXED! However the motors are not identical. As pictured the two electrical contacts where it plugs into the cars electrical system are slightly closer together. You have to bend the cars electrical contacts a little closer together with needle nose pliers and carefully insert the motor into them without bending them.

Also the white gear on the motor is clearly longer and won’t fit, so I used some snips to carefully cut it down to the proper length. The new gear is LOUD. If anyone finds a better and more appropriate gear I would gladly order and swap since these are super cheap. Otherwise this is much better than the $900 the dealer wanted .

 

The pitches of the gears look totally different, that's probably why it's screaming at you too.

You really should pull the old gear off and press it onto the new motor shaft.

 

it was louder before I reassembled it and the gears were spinning free. I tried to swap gears vs cutting but it seems they are permanently attached

 

Did you use a gear puller? They make them for tiny gears like that.

 

I haven’t ever used one. I could probably figure it out, but it seems to work fine aside from the noise. And as I said that noise was there before the gears were connected. It’s a slightly different motor than stock.

Im thinking the reason you can’t find the stock motor is that it’s made custom for this application. Maybe that’s why the stock ones are quiet? Who knows. I don’t see any easy way of ordering it from the manufacturer as I think they’re only really set up to service large companies with large orders.

 

Put the quiet motor where it controls the up and down movement.

Left and right almost never moves.

 

that’s a good idea

 

Ok you have all encouraged me to try for myself instead of “getting a bloke to do it” I really hate getting other people pulling things apart, it feels like they don’t take the proper care a Lexus deserves sometimes..

 

Hi guys thanks to all these tips, I decided to have a go myself. My up/down motor sounded like it was trying to work but did nothing.

my car is a 2013 4th gen GS450H and these instructions are spot on for that model too.

pulled it out following the great instructions on how to dismantle and powered it via 12v. It was trying to work. But the was a lot of machine oil/grease around.

I have some CO2 electrical contact cleaner so instead of dismantling (tried and was harder than I thought it would be) I flooded it with the contact cleaner several times and blew it out. Hey presto! That was all it needed to free up the brushes to the commutator and it started working again like the other motor!

boom - saved 100s of dollars! Thanks all - this forum is amazing

 

It failed on me today so i wanna give this a shot. Did you remove the glass mirror? To spray the contact cleaner?