Interior Exterior
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Like a lot of others, I feel that the OEM mirror in the Federal Elise is much, much too large. Too large to the point that it blocks the view out of the front of the windshield. I finally decided that the mirror had to go after an incident on a mountain drive. As I rounded a corner, my wife yelled out to watch for the deer! I had not seen the deer grazing on the right shoulder of the right hand curve - the mirror completely blocked my view. It was a good thing that he was happy eating the foliage and not walking across the road...
I decided that the small "baby mirror" that I had was the perfect size - 4 ½ inches by 1 ¾ inches (the factory mirror is 10 ½ inches by 2 ¾ inches). These mirrors are used to watch the kids in the back seat of your typical family car. They stick to the windshield with a suction cup and have a convex mirror to give a wide angle field of view. I tried using one stuck on the windshield after removing the OEM mirror for a while. Unfortunately the wide angle is not needed, since you only have a small "view port" out the rear of the Elise. It also made it very difficult to see things in the distance behind you (things like "Is that a cop closing on me?"). I quickly figured out that the "baby mirror", although the perfect size needed to be flat. That started this project...
I needed three parts, the "baby mirror" - they were about $2.50 when I bought them (I already had several - they are great for use when sitting in the passenger seat when teaching your 15 year old how to drive). A stock OEM mirror - I’m a stickler for being able to return my car to factory original, so I ordered a spare OEM mirror to cut up for about $17. And a piece of flat mirror to fit the "baby mirror" after I removed its original convex mirror - $0.99.
The "baby mirror" - actually two of them (I said I had a couple) is shown below. On the left are the mirror and the suction cup used to attach it to the windshield. On the right is shown the second assembled mirror.
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I bought a couple of these "craft mirrors" from a craft store. I bought a couple as spares because I figured I’d mess up and need extras, but it wasn’t needed.
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You need to use a glass cutter to scribe the glass (put a scratch in it) so that you can break it along the scribe. It’s not as hard as you’d think. You measure and scribe the glass/mirror; I used a metal straight edge to keep the line straight as I pulled the glass cutter along the mirror (note press hard and make one pass - you can’t go back and do it again; only one pass). Then you place the mirror along a hard sharp edge (I used the kitchen counter top), such that the scribe is right on the edge. Then you snap the mirror on the edge - basically you are breaking the glass, and if you do it right, it breaks along the scribe line. Harder than it sounds - it’s really fairly easy to do.
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Now that I’ve told you how I cut the mirror, I first had to figure out what size to make it. I had to remove the existing convex mirror from the "baby mirror" - I almost got it out intact, but it decided to break - about a quarter of it broke off in one corner. I used that to measure the height and width of the replacement mirror. I could have as easily measured the mirror frame opening, but it’s easier to measure the actual piece of glass that used to fit in the frame. The mirror has to be slightly bigger than the opening of the "baby mirror" as the lip of the frame of the mirror holds it in place (this is why it’s easier to measure the old mirror instead of the opening in the frame). The mirror "frame" without the mirror:
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I then cut off the "ball" from the back of the mirror frame, and set it aside for now.
Now comes a part that a lot of people have trouble with - removing the OEM mirror from the windshield "cleat" (Note: you can save this until you are ready to install the small mirror if you bought an extra mirror to destroy, like I did). The mirror has a "cover" snapped over the actual mount portion of the mirror. You pull down on the rear of the cover, and then you can insert a "hook" or a small screwdriver to release the clip on the mount. A couple of pictures would help - first the OEM mirror mount:
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To release the clip, you need to press it "down" away from the windshield. With that released, the entire mount/mirror assembly can be slid forward toward the front of the car (parallel to the windshield) to remove it from the cleat glued to the windshield - you have to hold down the clip as you push the mirror at the same time. I had to "bop" the mirror, and it suddenly let go and slid forward and off the cleat. You might want to put a towel on the dash, because it can let go suddenly (I wish I had done that, but at least nothing was damaged). Here’s another picture; the cover is "painted" in yellow, the clip is shown in red (you need to push the clip toward the bottom of the picture), and the entire mount (with mirror) should be pushed in the direction of the green arrow while holding the clip depressed.
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Next big thing was to take apart the OEM mirror (remember I kept the original). I had read that you could just pull it apart, but I had problems with that. I ended up using a couple of small screwdrivers to pry apart the mirror housing, because I figured out that there had to be some kind of tabs holding it together - there wasn’t, and I broke the glass (which was okay as I was throwing it away any way. I should have tried harder to get my finger nails into the grove of the mirror and pulled it apart. The portion of the mirror housing that faces toward the driver has a small lip that fits into the rest of the mirror housing.
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The lip wraps around about 90% of the two parts. There are no tabs or anything, just the lip - if you can get hold of the "glass side of the mirror, you really can just pull it away from the other part. The mirror glass rests in the part that you pull off - I guess you could push against the glass to pull the part off the mirror assembly - it’s not held in by anything else - it just rests in one part of the housing that is held to the other part by the lip. A close up of the mirror lip and the part of the housing that holds the mirror:
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Once I had the mirror apart, I had to make two small cuts on the part of the housing where the mount sticks through the housing at the top - since I was throwing away the un-needed parts; it was the easy way to get the part I wanted out of the assembly. The part that is needed out of the whole assembly is show here:
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The top view of the mount - the part that slides onto the windshield cleat - is shown here:
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I used my Dremmel to trim off the parts of the mirror mount that I didn’t need. Everyone has a Dremmel, right? If not, go buy one, you’ll wonder how you survived without one. The parts I trimmed off (using a cutting wheel) are pointed to by the red lines:
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Now, I have the mirror mount, the mirror frame, and a piece of mirror cut to the height and width that I need for the mirror frame. The next step is to attach the mirror frame to the mirror mount. The front and back of the mirror mount are at slightly different angles, and the mirror frame has two angles on the "front" (the part toward the front of the car). I picked the combination that allowed the mirror to be mounted closest to the part of the mount that attaches to the windshield (highest), and additionally fit so that it would allow the most "tilt" adjustment to give the best adjustment range. Once I had that determined, I drilled two small holes through the mirror mount and the mirror frame. I then pop riveted them together, using pop rivets with "backing washers" on the mirror frame side to spread the load on the flexible mirror frame. Since the tip of the pop rivet tool wouldn’t fit down into the "hole" in the mount, I had to use a stack of small washers (the pop rivet backing washers with the sides ground down with the handy Dremmel to fit into the recesses) over the top of the rivet head - this provided a temporary extension above the surface of the mount for the pop rivet tool to push against. The result is shown here:
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Okay, now I’m getting close. The mirror frame has rounded corners, so I have to round the corners of the mirror. This is a difficult task - not technically, but patience wise. I practiced on scrap parts of the mirror that I trimmed off of the piece I cut to fit. You can use a fine grinding bit in the Dremmel to grind away at the mirror. If you press too hard or used too coarse of a grinding wheel, it will grind the glass just fine - but it will chip off chunks of the mirror coating, making the edge look terrible. Instead, take it easy, use light pressure, and let it cool often - don’t keep going at it or let it get too hot. Again, the glass won’t have a problem, but the mirror coating will flake off. I also used some of the scrap to back the mirror such that the mirror coating was sandwiched between the glass - this helped to minimize any tendency for the mirror coating to flake off. The mirror grinding in progress is show here:
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The mirror ground to fit is shown below before it is inserted into the mirror frame - using care and patience, it worked fine.
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Next step is to insert the mirror into the mirror frame. I added some black silicon to the inside of the frame, "just in case". The silicon is not needed, as the frame will hold it just fine - it slightly snaps over the glass. The "smear" from the silicon that oozed out of the frame remains on a couple of the pictures that follow. Once everything had dried completely it all washed off with a good window cleaner. The completed mirror is shown here:
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A view of the mirror from another angle showing the windshield side of the mount is shown below. I plan to add some resin or something (epoxy maybe, I haven’t decided yet) to fill in the voids in the mount. Then I will paint the assembly with Fusion paint to make it a nice consistent black color.
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Here’s the first fitting of the mirror while parked in the garage (complete with the smears from the black silicon):
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Mounted in the car with the car parked on the driveway - I’m holding the camera slightly above where my head would normally be, I was trying to show the view out the rear, but it was hard to get it right with out being able to actually looking through the camera’s view finder (the camera was up against the headrest) - I don’t actually see the passenger side headrest and less of the boot is visible.
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Here's another picture showing my hand next to the mirror in an attempt to show the size.
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Finally, here's a view from outside the car, looking through the windshield. The "crudeness" of the mirror really isn’t as apparent as it appears in this picture. But I’m still going to fill it in and smooth it out (which is why the mirror is not slid completely into position and the cover is not snapped "up").