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Here are the pieces out of the box. Pretty simple
and very beautiful. I got the version with the convex lens to expand
the field of view.
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No problem to remove the old one and mount the new
one, right? Just remove the nuts on the inside of the door, clean the
dirt from under the old mirror and mount the new one. Right. It would
be good if one of my projects was actually that easy. The front nut
came right off. The rear one was hard to access even with an
articulated 1/4 in. drive 10 mm socket. Finally I was able to get a
box end wrench in the hole to see why it was not coming off. The
bolt was turning with the nut!
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I decided to sacrifice the Durant. If the Talbot
Junior does not work out, I'll have to get another new mirror. A bit
of work with a cut off tool on a dremel and we can see what's the
problem. The rear sliding mounting bolt has a notch in it. A flap of
metal is supposed to capture the bolt allowing it to slide back and
forth but not rotate. The flap was lifted and was no longer capturing
the bolt.
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Here is the bottom view of the Durant showing the
fixed bolt at the front and sliding one at the rear. The flap is
pushed up and away from the bolt, allowing it to turn and preventing
us from removing the mirror without destroying it.
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The mirror is now removed and we can check how it
should be mounted. Not good news. First, since the mirror could not
be removed, when the door was painted with clear coat last year, the
mirror stayed on the car allowing a ridge of paint to build up. This
will have to be removed. The second problem is the U-shaped mounting
bolt for the new mirror is too narrow for the holes. One solution
might be to drill a new hole. However, the U-bolt will still not work
because back side of the door in that area is probably too close to
the front surface to feed it through. Do not get the U-bold mounting
for an early 900 series car.
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The old mirror and its mount had seen better
days. Not only was their build up of clear coat around the edges, the
metal was pulled up particularly at the front mounting hole. This was
handled with a bit of judicious pounding with a body hammer. The
excess paint was wet sanded flat and then a series of finer grit
polishing compounds was used to get the finish back to an acceptable
level of flatness and polish.
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Here we are nearly done. A bit of touch up paint
and a cross check to see that the new mirrors base plate covers the
worst of the damage.
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Now to address the problem of the mounting bolts a
trip to the hardware store and $4 netted more than enough parts to
mount the mirror even with some mistakes.
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The solution that seems to work is to bend the
bolts, heating them with a butane torch while holding one end in a
vise. The front bolt required the most radical bend.
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Excess threads were cut off with the dremel cut
off tool that had done so well in destroying the Durant.
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A trial fitting shows it all may work. After some
additional minor adjustment, cleaning the parts with a wire wheel and
the application of some RTV to provide a bit of cushion and stability
for the back bolts for assembly the mirror was bolted together.
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Here is the finished installation - front
view. That lovely streamlined shape should be worth 1/10 horsepower
don't you think?
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Here is the view from the back.
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