As a lot of you may already know, the visibility from the fake Spoon mirrors aren't too great, especially on the passenger side. Mine used to look straight at the ground, so I called it my parking mirror for preventing wheel curbage. All it showed me was half of my car's quarter panel and half of the road/curb. It was pretty much useless.

Many times, the reason the adjustability on these mirrors suck so much *** is because we usually stick the mirror into the housing with little to no prior adjustment. So what happens is that when u go to adjust them for visibility, the egde of the mirror hits the inside of the housing, preventing it from moving any further. And what you're left with is a mirror that doesn't even function right.

So today, I finally decided to do something about it, without replacing the actual mirror/glass. Some people have broke the old mirror/glass and had a new one cut to solve this problem. They would just reposition the new mirror/glass so that it wouldn't hit the housing.. which works, but I took a different approach.

The problem with mine was not because it didn't look OUT far enough, but rather it didn't look UP high enough. If yours don't look OUT far enough, then this <u>How-To</u> probably won't help you. You would probably need to use the new mirror/glass method.

Anyways.. on to the write up.

What you'll need..
- a drill
- 1/8" drill bit
- 1/4" drill bit
- a marker
- a skinny file



1. First, you need to take the mirrors off the car. I'm not gonna go thru the steps on how to remove the mirrors because many of you probably know how to do it anyways, since a lot of you probably installed them yourselves.

2. Take the base plate off the mirror housing and you should see three threaded holes. I've numbered them 1, 2, and 3 in the picture below.



3. Here are the corresponding holes on the base plate. NOTE: this is what you'll be modifying to extract better adjustability from these Spoon knock-offs.

Put the mirror on the base plate and put a screw in hole #2. You dont need to tighten it; keep it a little loose so that it has some play.



4. Now, if your mirrors look too much at the ground, you want to point the housing up further. Use hole #2 as the pivot point and move the mirror up, utilizing the freeplay that's allowed. As you will see in the picture, holes #1 and #3 are no longer aligned.

Use a marker and mark the direction of the movement you noticed. Do this for hole #1, #3, and also the hole where the wires for power mirrors come thru. It's probably pretty similar with manual mirrors, except u have a rod coming thru.



5. After making your marks, grab your drill with a 1/8" drill bit and drill thru the marks you just made. Then attach the 1/4" drill bit and enlarge the holes. It might not drill thru correctly since it's so close to the original hole, but do what you can.



6. Now, grab the file and file out the new hole so you end up making an elongated hole (like an oval). This is what's going to allow you to adjust the mirrors better.



You'll end up with something like this..



7. Attach the base plate back onto the mirror housing and you should notice something similar to the pic below. The green arrows indicate the new range of adjustability.



8. Guesstimate a spot on the new range of adjustability and screw the base plate and housing in place. Bolt the mirrors onto the car and adjust mirror/glass for better visibility. If the mirror/glass hits the housing and you still can't see, then adjust the mirror housing again. If you still can't see, then try making the holes on the base plate a little longer.

Make sure you don't make them too long because if you do that and move the housing all the way to the end of the new adjustability, the housing might stick out of the base plate and would probably look ugly on the car. Move it just enough so that the housing doesn't stick out past the base plate. Then secure it in place and test it out on the car again. If you STILL can't see, then you know you really screwed yourself when you first stuck that mirror/glass on there. Only thing that would help is probably getting a new glass and repositioning it.

9. After you're done adjusting the mirrors.. you should end up with something like this..





No housing sticking out of the baseplate.. After adding new adjustability, mirrors still look the same from the outside.




I hope this is going to help some of you out there who can't see **** out of the fake Spoon mirrors, because it sure helped me.


Modified by _Edge.ONE at 2:56 PM 1/31/2005

 

Nice work and even better write up.

 

good right up.

 

Nice write-up. Hopefully I wont have to do this when i get my knock-of spoon mirrors, but if I do, i'll be sure to refer to this.

Thanks.

 

good job! doesnt apply to me.. but nice!

 

great work

 

nice write up, but what is that wire hanging out of the mirror?

 

Great write up, added to my favorites .

 

nice write up

 

dope write up...might have to refer to this when i get my spoon(fake) mirrors...hopefully not though

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by hatchgrl &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">nice write up, but what is that wire hanging out of the mirror?</TD></TR></TABLE>

im assuming theyre the power mirrors since his car is an ex

 

nice

 

very nice!

 

are those the dot approved powered knockoffs?

 

lol i had the same problem, i will try this when i the weather gets better here, snow = ghey

 

Awesome write-up

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SkyeC &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">are those the dot approved powered knockoffs?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Honestly, I don't know. I bought them a long *** time ago so they may not be.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by eJone powereD &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">dope write up...might have to refer to this when i get my spoon(fake) mirrors...hopefully not though

im assuming theyre the power mirrors since his car is an ex </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yup, that wire sticking out is for power mirrors. The manual ones won't have that wire.

 

awesome write up. Very informative and useful!

 

 

Nice!

I would also like to add, if you're going to get to cut mirrors, do not use those flat ones.
Visibility is limited. I bought a truck mirror, the ones that are curved convex and I cut it using glass cutter. Result is wider visibility. Although at fisrt, it was annoying coz images look farther than they actually are. But you'll get used to it.

 

damn nice write up!


Modified by vsm98civic at 11:27 AM 2/1/2005

 

nice write up

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by _Edge.ONE &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
</TD></TR></TABLE>

good sht on the write up. by the way, is that a scratch on your door?

 

good stuff!

 

Damn...I thought it would have made the mirror look different on the outside but you cant even tell...

 

nice job