Thursday, October 23, 2014

Mirror Images

When I bought the car it came equipped with a nice mirror.  Nice that is, unless you looked too closely.


Briefly, it was not a BMW mirror. The thing was so wide I wondered if it came from a Dodge Caravan or similar.  You couldn't even get the sun visors over it without a struggle.

What a PO had done was to ravage the aluminum arm in order to install a bigger pivot joint.

He or she had sheared the pivot and fastened - with now rusty bolts - another bracket that held a larger pivot ball, which in turn held the mini-van mirror that had been in the car. The whole assembly was a mess and I tore it apart as soon as I acquired the object of my dreams, an old NK chrome and metal mirror.

While my new mirror was being worked on I temporarily installed a 2002 mirror so I could drive the car without too much hassle. That is what is pictured below.



My new mirror did not look like this when I bought it.


It had to be disassembled and then the glass had to be resilvered. My friends at Classic Interior Restorations in Seattle gave me a lot a guidance and advice - although Greg, who works there part-time and is an expert in all things mirrorish, was the one who actually figured out how to pry off the little clamps that held the chrome frame to the body. Steve, who owns Classic Interior, watched the process and gave some good tips, like using 400 steel wool to remove the oxidation from the arm. This process took a couple of hours but worked nicely.

The final step involved painting the back of the mirror. This I did today and the result was satisfying.


Last thing was to get it into the car.  No worries there, either.


Now, I realize that the 1967 NK 2000 probably did not come from the factory with this older version NK mirror but still, I think it gives the car a certain je ne sais quoi...

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

A New Sense of Pride

I can't but help be proud of my new reubuilt transmission. Invisible to most people, at least to those who don't crawl under cars, the unit is a work of performance art that stands on its own merits. All thanks to Metric Mechanic. Here are a few photos I took today.  Shooting under a car on jack stands was a new experience to me and so the quality of images is, well, spotty: