Good? Vibrations

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday.
As I lifted the dust cover off my Elan the passenger side door mirror fell to the ground.
During the last couple of drives I’d noticed that it was wobbling about a bit. I put it down to the fastening bolt probably being loose, it’s happened before.
I’ve been planning to replace both door mirrors with ones which are actually usable, see photo.
It appears that vibrations have caused the material to fatigue, which is a bit surprising since the car & mirrors have done barely 4000 miles. The material is however very thin 0,45mm & my rather non-standard car does vibrate more than a standard road going Elan.
Now I’m going to have to strip out the door mechanisms in order to fit the new mirrors; the job I consider the most fiddly on an S4 & one I’ve been putting off just for that reason (OK I can see the grins on your faces you S1 & S2 owners).
In one way I consider myself lucky that the mirror didn’t part company with the car whilst being driven; it could have caused somebody some grief.
Anyway I’d thought I’d post this as a warning to anyone who has fitted “Bullet” type mirrors to their cars.

Cheers
John



The bullet mirrors fitted to my +2 are still on after 9 years and 35000 miles, but I will look at them more closely now!

You problem could have been a loose connection where the stalk fits to the body via the black rubber “gasket”. If the mirror was nodding up and down the heavy bullet might break away as you found.

I have managed to get both mirrors working (although the field of view is restricted). The passenger mirror had to be modified to angle the mirror itself more in its bullet. I positioned the mirrors just in front of the quarter light on the doors.

I dont blame you for choosing larger mirrors though :exclamation:

Dave Chapman.