Are car makers consciously being more clever about wing mirrors? Friday night I biffed the passenger side one on the edge of a wheelie bin, making a big noise, and when we got home I looked at the result and thought that it was all smashed to bits.
However, next day, in daylight and when I wasn't so tired, I looked again and realised that nothing was actually broken, except that the main cover and the winker lens cover were missing (and so stuff was just flopping down, making it look bad in the half-light).
I walked back to the impact point (other side of village), and found the two covers, reassembled it and bob's yer uncle. I was surprised that the plastic bits, and the mirror, were unbroken.
Presumably the energy of impact is designed to make it fall apart, rather than smash the plastic. The mirror seems to be attached with some non-setting glue, so it is well attached but can come off fairly easily.
While back a youth came past my old van very fast on a tractor and his trailer wrecked my wing mirror. I chased him and after a bit of a barney his dad gave me £60 off a big roll and said, "Now f*ck off." I did so, and got a new mirror from a commercial vehicle spares place for £20. The arm was OK. The mirror was a bit bigger than the original but it looked OK.
<snip>
1) He's old and not 'with it' (he wants England back like it was in the Victorian times etc).
2) He didn't stop at the scene of the accident.
3) He hasn't said if there was any damage to the bin (that he would be responsible for).
4) Might be time for him to have someone walk in front of his car, waving a red flag (see 1 above). ;-)
5) He might mark such posts at OT in the future.
6) Maybe he thought this was Twatter, seeing how much time he must spend on it from the stuff from it he cross posts here. ;-(
A bloke rang my bell one evening to tell me that a lorry had smashed my wing mirror (Seat Ibiza), and gave me the debris. In the morning I found that it was just the plastic shell, not holding anything, and I was able to click it back as it was undamaged.
In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Dave W snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk> writes
The Fiesta ones are about £40.00 each! After my wife's 4th. confirmation that her car is wider than she thinks, I used hot melt glue to reassemble the bits. Not pretty but it does act as a reminder:-)
The only time I've had a wing mirror smashed was on a 1993 Golf as a result of a road-rage attack: a guy stopped in the middle of the road on a roundabout under the M4 near Slough, and leapt out of his car brandishing what looked like an iron bar. I steered round him, but he lunged at the car and I caught him (or the bar) a glancing blow. I drove off (*), aiming to put as much distance between him and me as possible. However he caught up with me at the next set of lights in Windsor and smashed my wing mirror with the bar.
I remember thinking that when the lights changed, I was going to set off and lose him because he'd have to get back into the car, but I was aware that he was tugging at the door handle and I didn't want to take his hand with me (lots of paperwork!) so I pointed at the lights to divert his attention and then as soon as he turned and let go, I went.
They never got the guy. He was a smartly-dressed man in a business suit, not the stereotypical over-testosteroned young lad. White-faced with rage - which is a much worse sign than being red and blustering but usually less furious. Goodness knows what I'd done to offend him, or whether it was mistaken identity. I was glad of central locking to prevent him getting in, even though he tugged and yanked at the door handle and called me "an F-ing nutter".
Nowadays the initial leaping from the car with an iron bar would have been caught on a dashcam and I might have been able to remove the camera from its windscreen mount and point it at him as he was lashing out at my car.
The plastic housing of the mirror shattered into bits and the mirror itself broke into several pieces that remained loosely attached together by heating wires on the reverse side. A replacement was a fairly small bill, fortunately.
(*) When I reported the incident to the police, as a road-rage attack on me and possible injury to another motorist, the police said that in the circumstances, where I feared for my safety, I was right not to stop to see if he was all right, and I'd now reported the incident so I wasn't guilty of "failing to stop", under the "as soon as practicable afterwards" clause.
On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 14:16:53 +0100, Tim Lamb snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk> wrote: <snip>
A (good) neighbour knocked to tell me he'd smashed a rear-light lens on the kitcar, was very sorry and would get and pay for a replacement.
I thanked him for letting me know and his offer to replace but just went out and got the bits and glued them together as that Lucas fitment is a long time obsolete. Any replacement would have to be done in pairs and would likely require a rebuild of the whole rear lighting solution. ;-(
Awww. ;-)
Some consolation that a new / complete Range Rover mirror, painted and fitted is around £1000! <gulp>
In February I was 'mirrored' for the first time in many years, despite the currrent car being narrower than previous ones. Bits were hanging out of the housing and others were lying on the road about a quarter of a mile from where I'd been able to park. I walked back and was surprised to find that no-one had run over them - the road was quite busy. Nothing was broken and I managed to re-assemble all the parts, the motor still worked and the marks on the case will only be noticed by anyone looking for them.
I was somewhat luckier. A guy stopped in a really bad position to let his wife out. Just as I was squeezing past, she stepped into the road while looking the other way. I hit the brakes and the horn, she turned and swore at me and then carried on crossing. I moved on to the lights ahead, while he jumped out of his car, came running after me and attempted to open the door. As the lights went green, I turned right, pulled up to the police van that was sat at the red light and asked them if they'd seen it :)
Not only had they seen it, but they were somewhat hot on it, as it was only two days after the road-rage murder on the M25 by Kenneth Noye was all over the news.
A friend was driving on the M62 when she had a blowout and hit the central reservation ... travelling backwards.
She smashed the rear light and crumpled the corner.
She and her boyfriend brought the car round (that was an old Fiesta) and we straightened out what we could, but it was obvious that we'd never get the mounting for the light cluster into anywhere near the right shape.
A quick visit to a scrappy got the relevant section of the rear wing and pillar and the existing structure was intact though misshapen, so we brazed the piece on top, slapped a bit of P40 over the rough edges and refitted the light.
For the next couple of years she drove round with a different coloured corner and bare filler. She said it was amazing how much more of a wide berth people gave her!
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