C6 mirrors on a 1st gen. (gaskets?)

[duckmanjbr]

After almost a year of waiting on the bodyshop my car is finally done and home for me to get my hands dirty on again and try to finish it up. Almost a year ago I was debating on what mirrors I wanted to run and just how to get them to look right but w/ being in the bodyshop for so long the plans were kind-of on hold..... So to my question:


I've decided on running the C6 mirrors on my 1st gen to maximize the rear view ability and get good drive-ability out of the car. I've looked at shaping the mirror, maybe shaping the door or just doing some type of adapter piece. I've concluded the best plan to allow ease of anything in the future would be to not cut or shape anything but to simply make the adapter piece. So now hours later I know it can be done pretty easily with a very small but 3D shaped rubber gasket. The C6 rubber gasket is very close to fitting but some side areas need an extra 1/8' or ¼' added to the rubber. I've made a working prototype out of fiberglass and it looks great so I'm ready to go down the road of rubber molding. So my question is; has anyone already done this? May some1 already have the mold or a set of gaskets? If not I'll keep moving forward, do the mold and start making some gaskets.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2011/09/IMG_0737-1.jpg


What was the fix for all you other guys running the C6 mirrors?

[duckmanjbr]

So I didn't get much feedback on the C6 mirror idea however I'm convinced it was the right decision for me. I decided to go the route of not modifying the car door or the mirror at all. I want future upgrade or replacement to be as easy as possible so I decided to make an adapter to match both pieces together. The first step was to make a piece from fiberglass that matched the contour of the door as well as the shape of the mirror. This was a little trying and time consuming w/ a lot of back and forth until I got it just the way I wanted it. I've worked with fiberglass for years so this was all w/in my comfort zone. The adapters have places that are 1/8" and other places (the front) which is almost 1/4" thick. Nothing is flat and nothing is symmetrical so this was by far the hardest part of this mod! I wanted something that went up into the mirror as well as around the base to ensure a really good seal. Once I had the fiberglass pieces completed I debated using just them as is. Everything fit perfect and the finish was flawless. My drawback was I couldn't get past the possibility of water leakage through the seam between door and mirror and allowing unwanted water when it rained to end up on the inside of the door. My solution took me completely out of my comfort zone and into the realm of casting and rubber molding. Step one was to make the molds of the fiberglass adapters..
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2012/11/51F2E839252E4E70B93A543C9DA12C5B21019000-1.jpg

Above you can see the molds ready to be poured and the adapters in the molds. Once the molds were completed (which was pretty easy) I moved on to casting the adapter from rubber. I decided on using Flex-it 40. It's a simple 2 piece product. If anyone else wants to go down this path I'd recommend something a little more firm. Maybe a Flex-it 70? My castings using the 40 work perfectly and have no issues however they are a little softer than a normal factory style rubber gasket and therefor I'm thinking might not last as long. I'm totally guessing here. As I said I'm way outta my comfort zone and I'm going completely off my car knowledge and the company I ordered the rubber from who knew nothing about cars and what I was trying to do. The resin(rubber) is normally clear and I debated making my adapters black however because of the mirror already standing out as not factory I wanted to make it as subtle as possible and try to not allow attention to be drawn to the mirror. I went w/ a color match to my grey and just played w/ white and black mix until I got the color right. Here's the finished adapter..
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2012/11/1182D1B4F901488D9D3189DCB1A0CE2379780000-1.jpg

The color is almost spot on and I'm completely happy w/ the finished product. I had a little learning curve to get the casting correct but once I got the temp and timing correct I made both side adapters w/ no issue. I'll stress this was not easy task and a highly advanced mod! Total time invested for me is the better part of 150-200 hours from start to finish. That to me is a long time to put a set of mirrors on a car however safety isn't something I'm willing to skimp on and I will be running new mirrors both in and out so I have good visibility when I'm driving this thing!

So on to the end product.... I think it's turned out great for never having done anything like this before and hopefully not to many people will ever notice. This isn't going to be a factory refurb car so I'm thinking only the diehard guys will notice the work involved but that's how I wanted it. I wanted it to look as factory as possible and still give me my heated, power mirrors! So what does everyone think? Everyone was trying to talk me into the factory pieces of crap but seeing as the car is a 500hp LS6 w/ T-56 and Ford9 rear I think the car is far from factory already!!

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2012/11/BA4E476286E341B5947641E8B9D844BB79780000-1.jpg

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2012/11/D3639ED7BF084D0A9D632463F338118079780000-1.jpg

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2012/11/9AE941EF14A0402BA0DE348F82BD201979780000-1.jpg

[wellis77]

That's a great mod. I'm doing something similar with Viper mirrors on my build. Was the majority of your time on this spent building the fiberglass adapters? Thinking through how I'll do it, I am thinking I'll have something machined from aluminum, but I like the rubber adapter idea better. I'm not a fiberglass stud but willing to put the time in to do it right. Any tips on how you did the fiberglass adapter before molding it in rubber?

[BobK]

So now that you've got the molds made, are you ready to recoup some of that time investment and start selling the adapters? I've been looking at the C6 mirrors for my '69, so I'd be interested in buying if you're interested in selling.

[duckmanjbr]

That's a great mod. I'm doing something similar with Viper mirrors on my build. Was the majority of your time on this spent building the fiberglass adapters? Thinking through how I'll do it, I am thinking I'll have something machined from aluminum, but I like the rubber adapter idea better. I'm not a fiberglass stud but willing to put the time in to do it right. Any tips on how you did the fiberglass adapter before molding it in rubber?

@Will- I'd say 95% of my time was in the making of the fiberglass. I really think the aluminum will leak water so if this will be a driver for you I'd suggest not going that route! As far as tips for the fiberglass...... LOTS of shaping, relaying more fiberglass and more shaping again! Like I said this is where mostly all my time went!

[duckmanjbr]

So now that you've got the molds made, are you ready to recoup some of that time investment and start selling the adapters? I've been looking at the C6 mirrors for my '69, so I'd be interested in buying if you're interested in selling.

@Bob- I never did this to sell however shoot me a PM and we can talk more. You're the 1st to show any interest so you have the pleasure of helping me come up w/ something reasonable for a deal.

[wellis77]

Thanks for that. Definitely a dd so I'll need to go rubber. Would you recommend estimating the max thickness I'll need, lay-up a bunch of mat to that thickness then start sanding and shaping?

[duckmanjbr]

2-3 layers at a time... it'll take a while! Our doors are very contoured where u'll be working