At 11:59 AM 8/16/2003, Mike Miller wrote:
>Fresnel?

Fresnel.

>David B will know.

If i'm so clever, why am I not rich? ;)

> > in the middle...then I tried moving it towards the passenger side but still
> > doesn't seem to show lots of the passenger side.
> >
> > I can't furgure out how to place it best if I want to see more towards the
> > passenger side.  I can see well on the drivers side since that side mirror
> > doesn't have themoving  problem.  thanks for any advice.

First advice is a) fix the mirror, and b) stick a quarter-circle convex
mirror to it (that will take up about 2/3 of either the top or bottom half
of the mirror -- you'll want to experiment a bit before deciding which
corner to stick it to.  The quarter-circle design maximizes the useful
view, and they're only $3 or so -- RV places, I've seen them at K-Mart).

On the lens, if it's one meant for the back of an RV it's designed to let
you see the ground -- so rotate it so the edge marked "bottom" is toward
the right, and place it as far to the right as you can.  It still won't be
very satisfactory, I think, because a small car could easily get forward of
its view.  I have one of the larger-size 3M ones mounted the regular way,
and I find that when I can see the headlights of the car I'm passing in it,
it's reasonable to pull over.

On dealing with the regular mirror -- I've been looking at it as a problem
of the mirror being too loose; but it's maybe useful to think also that the
air blast is too strong.  It might be possible to rig a deflector tab in
front of it that would reduce the blast to a more reasonable level so we
wouldn't all have to fight with the mirrors.  Thoughts?  How about a small
aero-spike (i.e. a stick pointing forward from the middle of the mirror,
with a disk on the end of it)?  And do people have trouble with both
mirrors, or mostly the passenger side (as I do)?

As far as tightening the existing adjustment -- there's a spring-loaded nut
inside the base that sets the pressure between base and mirror.  If it's
all the way up and mirror still too loose (which is likely), a washer of
some high-friction stuff between the ball and socket parts could help.  The
mirror I got some years ago from Bus Depot had a plastic bearing surface
there that made it much too easy to move; removing that helped a good
deal.  Mine never shifts in the wind -- but people walking past bump it,
and I have a powerful suspicion that slamming the door makes it move.

david

--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"