Homemade Side Mirror Extensions

Homemade Side Mirror Extension

A friend drives a Toyota Tacoma with a camper on the back. He extended his side view mirrors cheaply with some longer bolts, bushing sleeves for the new bolts, some duct tape and some foam. Now he can see behind his vehicle again.

You should be able to get this modification to work on your rig. Most newer cars and trucks have bolt on side mirrors, and usually they use three bolts to attach the mirror housing to the front doors. See Zredsox's Azera Mirror Install CarSpace album for a good example of what to expect.

Basically you remove your door panel to access the housing, replace the OEM bolts with longer ones and use bushing sleeves to support the housing and give yourself something to tighten the mirror housing against (sorry, didn’t get photos of attaching the new bolts to the housing). Then you cover the gap between the housing and the door with foam and tape. This step is optional but if you skip it, you’ll probably experience whistling and other wind noise at highway speed. Please see the photos at the bottom of this Guide.

Step 1 - remove the interior door panel. Usually the panel is held in place with one or two screws (hidden under covers that you lift off with a small, flat blade screwdriver). After removing the screws, you have to "pop" the panel connectors off. You can buy a tool to help with this step but usually you can manage with just your fingers. If you break one or two connectors, the panel will probably fit back on ok without them, and universal type connectors are available for purchase at the big box hardware stores.

Step 2 - once all the connectors are loose, lift up on the door panel an inch and then pull it away from the door. Usually the top of the panel fits down into a lip next to your window, so that’s why you lift up on it to remove it. Once it’s loose from the door, you may need to disconnect the mirror, door light and/or speaker wires in order to get the panel out of the way. Or just have a friend hold it for you while you go to:

Step 3 - remove the three (or more) bolts holding the mirror housing onto the door. Ease the housing away from the sheet metal. The housing will probably have a "wing" and perhaps some type of gasket. This would be a good time to remove just one of the bolts and temporarily rehang the panel on the window lip and drive your other car to the hardware store. Buy bolts about 3" longer than the OEM bolts. And you may as well grab a few connectors to replace the ones you broke when you popped the panel off. Pick up your bushing sleeves too - if they are a bit too long for your bolts, you can cut them down to size with a hacksaw. You could substitute plastic pipe but metal sleeves may be a bit stronger.

You can also use this trip to find minicell foam or you can wait until after Step 5 to make sure you like the setup and to give yourself a chance to measure the size of the gap beween the housing and the door. If the hardware store doesn’t have small blocks of high density foam available, a good source would be a fabric or upholstery store. Sporting goods stores that outfit whitewater boaters will have suitable blocks of dense foam - two blocks about 3" thick and 8 x 12" each should fit most mirrors (~$10 USD). If you can’t find foam that’s thick enough, you can glue two or three sheets together. The whitewater shop will also have a Dragonskin shaping tool that comes in handy for shaping the foam but you can make do with a fine toothed handsaw. I prefer a Japanese style trim saw for cutting foam, but most any saw (or simply a hacksaw blade) should work fine. A bread knife works great too.

Step 4 - now that you’ve assembled the replacement bolts, foam, tape and tools, and a piece of cardboard for a template, test fit the mirror with the bolts and make sure the new mirror setting sticks out far enough to enable you to see behind your camper or whatever you are towing back there. You can go to a longer bolt and bushing sleeve but you don’t want to overdo it or the mirror will shake too much to be usable. If that’s an issue, you'll be better off buying some aftermarket mirrors or extensions.

Step 5 - reattach the mirror using the bolts and sleeves. You can quit now and reattach the panel if you wish and ignore any wind noise - the gap will look funny but the set up will work at this point. You can add electrical tape around the bolts at this step if you wish, and you may decide that's enough.. See the first photo. If you have power or heated mirrors this would be the time to extend the wiring so those functions will continue to work.

Step 6 - for a more finished appearance, and to reduce wind noise, use your cardboard to make a template for the foam. The idea is to cut the foam into the (usually) triangular shape of the mirror housing with a cutout in the center to fit over the bolts. So cut pieces of cardboard to follow the housing shape, and tape the pieces together. Then use the template to cut out your foam block to size.

Step 7 - cut the foam. The critical cut, if required, is the one to make the block narrower. You want the foam block to fit snugly without having to apply too much force to fit it into place. After the block is the right thickness, then use the template to cut the shape and make the cutout where the foam will fit over your bolts. Use the leftover scraps to make a small block to fit the gap in the back of the foam where the cutout was made to clear the bolts.

Step 8 - once you are happy with the fit of the foam between the door sheet metal and the mirror housing, use your duct tape to cover the foam and keep everything in place. You should be able to buy tape in a color to match or contrast with your truck . If you have a silver truck, you’re in luck because the plain old standard duct tape will match great - at least from ten feet away! It’s best to avoid the paint and stick the duct tape to itself and to the mirror housing. When you remove the foam and replace the bolts with the originals (that you have carefully labeled and stored for this day), you can use some Goo-Gone or similar solvent to completely remove any adhesive on the mirror housing.

Does it really work for the long haul? My friend leaves Idaho tomorrow morning for Alaska so I'll try to update this page in a week and see how the mod is working out for him. [edit Oct. 9 '07 - friends are back and even the duck tape is holding up well!]

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