Convex mirror update: First prototypes made today!

["Walter" <Whalt@xxxx>]

I have the first DeLorean with a convex side mirror. Kewl!

I went to a large stain glass shop in town with 3 large convex truck mirrors
in hand. I traced a pattern on the glass with a magic marker, and an
employee of the shop cut them out by hand with a hand-held etching diamond
cutter. He broke one of the three. The corners didn't cut very well, so
he rounded them off on a router with a wet diamond bit. The blade was too
coarse and chipped the edges too much. He seemed in a hurry and acted sort
of spastic, but he is very talented to do what he did. He then tried pieces
of mirror on various wet diamond blade band saws. The saw that did the best
job (as good as a factory OEM mirror) used a very fine blade. If he used
that saw to begin with, he wouldn't have broke one of the mirrors.

So now what I have is two half-way decent convex mirrors. Both have up to
1.5mm chips around the perimeter in spots. These mirrors are not good
enough to sell, but make a good prototype for the next batch.

How does it look on the car? Fantastic! I can actually see the horizon AND
the curb in one glance. It makes parking the car a lot easier. One thing
that I didn't expect to see is that the outer 1/2" of the mirror is pretty
useless because it shows a reflection of the mirror housing. The housing in
that corner is pretty deep. The fact of the matter is that the shape of the
housing is not the best to hold a convex mirror. If I trimmed some of the
corner bead off of the housing, it could be an improvement but probably
totally screw it up too. Perhaps the '82 version of the housing wouldn't
have this problem. Another option is to modify the swinging part of the
housing so that it locks in a more outward position. That is probably a
better option, but it isn't really necessary. The convex mirror as it is
now is a vast improvement over the OEM flat one.

I'll be going back to the shop in a couple of days with another handful of
truck mirrors and this time cut them out myself on the finest wet diamond sa
w. If the guy only slowed down and took his time and tried it the hard way
first then I would have left there with three perfect mirrors.

Walt Tampa, FL