Since the jdm ones are so damn hard to find, I snagged a mirror off a wagon in the junk yard and am converting it. Just a single pic for now. Others were taken from the phone so not the best quality, but I'll get them up later.
So you tear the mirror apart, this took some bending and drilling to get the pins out, eventually it came undone.
Sorry for the blur the iPod wasn't behaving.
Inner piece. I roughed up the hole that is being filled so the epoxy grabs hold better.
Mask it off. If I had another one I might orient the tape differently not sure if that would help. I have a slight indentation where the tape was after filling. Could be filled again, but it's good enough as is for me.
Fill it up with epoxy.
Bam, set! Try not to get so many bubbles, I suck.
Then it's just a matter of shaping it.
Primed.
More shaping
Some Eastwood underhood black. You can still see where the patch is a bit, so I took to the wet sand.
Smoothed it out much more.
Krylon fusion flat black. I think it turned out pretty well.
All right, that was the easy part, now on with the exterior panel. You need to cut all the junk off that held the mirror.
You end up with something like this
Fits in there nicely. And you can see I've started knocking down the excess plastic. This is the only time I really used a power tool, so with some simple hand tools this can be done.
Masked and filled. Time will tell if this epoxy holds up to the elements.
Random thought, with some LEDs and careful paint you could always turn this into some custom plate thing. Like use a decal as a paint mask then peel have if back lit. Who knows.
So much shaping. Still not perfectly flat but close enough. Also, do not use a belt sander for more than a few seconds, at least not with this resin, it heats up fast and remelts. I may try a version with jb weld. See if it holds up any better.
Initial primed, I shaped it a bit more after this. Also I was getting some weird cracking on the paint. Might have been from spraying while it was too cold out. I've since primed it more and painted it. Will snap pics of that later.
It's currently painted with some of the Eastwood underhood black. I need to knock some of the shine off it. I have some 2000 grit wet sand paper coming in, I'll see if that works. Maybe even some synthetic steel wool. But I do want to smooth it a bit, it's got a bit of of orange peel looking finish to it.
All right, picked up some rustoleum bumper and trim paint, it worked really well. Applied 4 coats, then wet sanded at 1500 and 2000 grit. Then used some Meguiar's Swirl X to polish it up.
Shiny!!!
And the interior bit, I did it in flat black because I don't need reflective surfaces in there if I can avoid them.
So there it is,next project would be to see if I can make one and develop a mold off of that. If I can then I will be sure to make more of these.
Except for real world testing, seeing how it holds up to the elements, I consider this one project complete.
All right, update, project not complete!
So it turns out if I'm doing these this way I need to put the metal bracket in place and leave it there while filling. It bends the plastic a bit so things fit up tighter. I didn't do that, and had to shape some things a bit more and in doing so once the bracket was installed it flexed enough that there's now a visible seam where the epoxy meets the plastic.
Fortunately I think I can knock that down fill as needed and then sand and paint.
For the next one I'm leaving the plate in place the whole time.