Along with the NB mirrors in the sale were some home made polyurethane mounts to adapt the spacing/seating angle of the mirrors and the mounting screws.
The mounts didn't look like much and had a load of imperfections in the moulds but after more thinking about them, they were pretty impressively made.
I wanted to give a go in stripping the mirrors it all back, prime and paint them and aside from a lot of time hand sanding them they were straight forward.
The mould mounts were tricky. No idea how to setup or prep polyurethane. I'm spewing i didn't take any photos of them before the preps i did or during the painting process.
So...
the origninal mirrors included a jewish racing gold passenger side, and a BRG driver side mirror.
Back in september last year, I remove the glass and sanded back the interior and exterior, which took me ... a long time.
I left them alone for a few weeks before returning to them in november in the warmer weather to apply primer.
on sanding back the primer i'd stuffed up around the front corners exposing plastic, and this took me a long time to master the technique, and about 3 cans per mirror of primer were sprayed, sanded back too far, then resprayed etc.
Eventually, i got it right, uniform and all smoothed out. The process eventually "felt" organic in the wet sanding process and i got pretty confident spraying without giving the mirrors or myself the runs..
I wanted to make sure this was done right because i really REALLY didn't want to have to resand back future painting. I lack the additional patience that would require!
These again, sat in my shed for another 5 weeks until the xmas break. I kept telling myself they needed to dry longer, but in reality, i was frankly shitscared of painting the colour coat.
Back to the shed over the hot days of the xmas break and i'd worked out a simple way of hanging the mirrors for painting all sides in the one sitting - coathangers rock!
I applied a fairly thick wet coat onto the mirrors. I did get one run happen but over the course of a few days, painting, sanding back, repainting etc i've applied quite a few coats onto them.
I also lost my concern for the slightly rough finish on some of the angles in the above photo, esp when i learnt that wet sanding it 1500grit then 2000grit, then polishing it made it come up a bloody treat.
next was to tackle the very rough polyurethane mounts. Bubbles in the mixture resulted in trapped bubbles in the mould, some of which had surfaced on the edges creating a very VERY rough ugliness. I ended up spraying an entire can of primer onto each mount. Light coat initially then super wet heavy coats. Each separated by an hour in hot weather. The mounts then lost their flexibility, and dried very rigid. The rough surface was eventually smothered with primer which created a new smooth surface (after sanding). Theres about 8 stupidly thick coats of primer layered on each mount and for the most part, i managed to get them ok. One of the mounts did have a 0.75cm hollow on one of it's corners. I managed to fill most of it out but had run out of primer by this stage and still had a 0.2cm recess by the end of it. Bugger it i thought, it's going to be black, in a corner and at that point, i didnt care. Ultimately, its not noticeable until pointed out, and even then, its still hard to see.
Now to the point i'd been imagining for months - fitment!
Installation was easy as. The moulds and mirrors also came with extended hex bolts and after removing the door cards to release the electrical connector for the power mirrors, each side took well less then 15 minutes to fit.
original NA8 power mirror
shiny new NB mirrror
driver side close up.
driver seat driver side view
driver seat passenger side view
FINALLY the mirror isnt obscured by the window slider rail.
The mirrors also fold up nicely and dont protrude the outer width of the car - i didnt expect that to happen!
showing the mirror, my recently painted skirts and front parking cam
(more on that later)
and showing the overall fitment and angle.
Incidentally, the side skirts, i'd purchased last year too - in gel coat, so i sanded, primed and painted them at the same time. : )
Then gave the car a wash and its first good paint clean/polish since i've got it 18 months ago : )
