convex side mirrors!

["Walter" <Whalt@xxxx>]

I have been busy experimenting & practicing on various glass cutting &
beveling equipment and finally produced some high quality convex side
mirrors to fit the DeLorean. The bad news is that it takes me about an hour
to cut & bevel each mirror, but this should improve with practice. The good
news is that they look great! The product is a 'surface mirror' type of
glass which gives a much higher quality image than having the light pass
THROUGH the glass TWICE before you see the image. The edges of the mirrors
look very clean. They make a fine dark edge whereas the OEM glass tends to
have a bright perimeter where light is refracted through the edges.

Making these mirrors available to everyone who wants them is another
problem. First, it is a very time consuming job. There isn't enough demand
for them to pay some Taiwanese company with a robot whip them out. So I am
starting with a larger mirror and cutting it down the hard way. (In the
process I crop out that annoying "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY
APPEAR" message.) Also I am having trouble finding very many larger mirrors
to start from. If anyone knows of a cheap source for large convex mirror
glass, let me know. The best source so far is NAPA, but they are expensive.
I found cheaper ones at Pep Boys, but the glass wasn't high enough quality
to suit my tastes.

For now I am plenty busy supplying friends who I have already made
arrangements with. In about a month I will probably start putting some up
on eBay. I would rather just wholesale them to the vendors, but it is
costing too much already to make these. I don't think the market would bare
having a vendor mark it up that much more. Maybe someday I will recover the
cost of the equipment. For now I have several hundred bucks invested, but I
have always wanted to be able to make stained glass windows with polished
beveled edges. :) Another nice thing about these mirrors is that I am
making them for the driver side as well as the passenger side. Everyone who
I talk to in Europe says that this is standard for all cars. But in the
U.S., we only get convex on the passenger side. But now I have changed
that! :)

Mirror mirror on my car, who has the coolest DeLorean of them all?
Walt Tampa, FL