Big Mirror refurb

The Atlantic was one of the few vans that came with big mirrors as standard. These were always colour coded from factory in one of three available colours. White, calypso green or red. My van on the other hand came with mat black mirrors.

This didn’t particularly bother me as I always knew I would get round to painting them at some point. It’s just never really been a priority, what with the van getting plenty of use during both winter and summer. However, my current situation means Wolfgang is off the road for the time being, so this became an opportunity….(always need a positive spin with these vans ?)

Unfortunately, its not quite as simple as just unscrewing them via the visible screws on the door bracket. They are heated and servo adjustable from a switch module on the left hand, drivers door. This means that the door cards have to come out on both sides. The fallowing video is a guide to removing the door cards for anybody that may need to perform this process: (courtesy of Van-Again on YouTube)

Below is my door after card removal:

Then  electrical ‘block’ connector needs disconnecting and stripping….

after which the wires can then be passed through the small cable aperture to mirror.

Its not massively difficult, but a little more involved than one would first imagine.

Then the mirrors need stripping into their basic components before paint.  Separating the bracket from the mirror was done using a pair of long nosed pliers . There is large slotted nut (1 in below image) that winds up against a perspex bush (2 in below image) and spring. Again, not the easiest thing to do especially if the nut hasn’t been removed for a number of years.

The mirror glass also needs to be removed. If you look closely in between the glass and the outer casing you can just see the two tabs sticking out on either side. Not particularly clear under instruction exactly how these hold the mirror in, but with a couple of knives carefully slotted down the side, and an up movement on one side, and down on the other, the mirror pulls free of the servo unit.

From the picture above I was slightly surprised to see the original colour inside the casing. I did strip one of the mirrors down even further in the hope that I could just send the plastics and bracket away for spraying, but realized the connectors on the end of the loom wouldn’t go through the hole in the bottom of the mirror. This meant they must have been crimped on after they were thread out of the aperture during construction at the factory. I wasn’t willing to cut them off and re connect after paint, so I left the whole servo assembly in the mirror. You can see more clearly the original paint in the photo below.

I can only assume that the original external paint must have gotten scratched, chipped or dis-couloured to the point where a previous owner decided to take matters into his own hands with a DIY spray-job using a can of mat black paint.

So this was just about as far as I could take it. I was considering getting a few rattle cans made up and having a go at painting them myself. However, these wouldn’t have been cheap, and these on top of the extra wet-n-dry emery paper and primer, would have meant that I probably wouldn’t be saving a great deal against the cost of a professional paint shop. So the paint was purchased and both mirrors and paint were taken to a body shop I had used previously to have my Fiamma Box painted.

Two Days later I collected and I must admit I am pretty happy with the results . I just need to build them up and pop them back on the van 🙂