Doing a search on the Ponton group archives last night, I found some basic information on how to get the mirror off. It's certainly not obvious just looking at it. The main mirror stem is attached to a mount, which itself is mounted on the car with three screws. A part of the mirror stem goes *through* the mount, and is held in place with spring-loaded rounded pins. You have to depress one (or both) pins in order to detach the mirror.
The trick is, the spring-loaded pins aren't obviously visible - you have to know to look for them. And in my case, it was easier to find - as the wood trim that wraps around the inside of the front windshield comes in two pieces, which meet right at this point - each has a notch cut out in the shape of the sides of the mirror mount. With the trim pieces in, you can't see or access these pins at all. But my trim pieces have been off the car for some time. How convenient!
Last night, I spent a good ten, fifteen minutes at various times over the evening trying to get this dang mirror off. I could get one of those pins pushed in somewhat, and I could see a gap show between the stem and mount, could wiggle it some - but I only had two hands. So today, I called over one of my neighbors to help out - he depressed one pin, I depressed the other and had a spare hand to tug the mirror stem loose.
Here's the mirror, held up approximately in place. You can see how the shape of the top of the stem matches the mount behind.
(FYI, the nasty stuff across the top of the windshield is duct tape residue. The rubber seals on the windshields quit holding water out some years ago, and my cousin removed the wood trim and taped up those areas back in the day, to keep water out. Joy!)
Here's the position of the mirror as it came out - ended up tugging it straight down, using the back end of the stem as a lever against the back end of the mount. It was then a simple matter to remove the mount itself, and bag'n'tag all the relevant parts.
A closer shot of the spring-loaded rounded pins that had to be pushed in. I suspect I had more trouble than expected because the springs inside probably haven't moved since the car was first built. One Ponton group member suggested taking this area apart and oiling the springs. Around each pin is a ring with a set of grooves (one on each side) - I suspect these screw out somehow, allowing the pins and spring (or springs, not sure yet) to be removed.
As I'll be putting some of this stuff into the "to-be-rechromed" pile, I'll definitely be pulling those bits apart beforehand.
UPDATE: I managed to get that spring/pin bit taken apart, mostly.
The two rings on each with the grooves are just the ends of a pair of small cylinders to hold the spring and pins. The shorter cylinder (the rightmost part) threads onto the larger cylinder. I just had to get a pair of screwdrivers and rotate the two ends in opposite directions to get the smaller cylinder to pop out.
Right now, I can't get the larger cylinder out - it spins freely but it won't move in or out! I hit it with some penetrant earlier, maybe that'll help get it to budge.
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