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I made some new mirrors for my FB, I think it's cool so I'll share.
I did it by using some convex blue tinted aftermarket mirrors for an ND miata. It's all 3D printed and I painted it yesterday put em on today. The adjustment is now manual using some socket head screws under the cap so it's set and forget. So far they look real nice I see about 4x more than the stock FB mirrors. Huge quality of life upgrade. But they do look a smidge funky. Fusion 360 is hard.
So you copied & printed a mirror that is made for an nd miata but you modified the base so it bolts onto our doors? Is that what you're saying you did?
It looks good but does have an awkward shape that at certain angles doesn't really flow with the car lines...
Nah it's 100% my design, the only thing that's borrowed from another car is the mirror glass itself. Trying to make the 3d model in fusion was really hard and I feel like there must be a better way to do it that I don't know of lol. At some point I just said whatever I'm just going to make it "good enough" so I don't spend 2 months trying to design it. Function over form, looks a little weird but it works great.
Amazing "do it yourself" project, are "different" looking, and they may appear at first to be a little "funky" however, I think after awhile you will see them as just part of your car and they have always been there. 3D printing is the future for trying to keep RX 7's on the road and every attempt is "important." Great effort.
This is interesting as my 46 year old mirrors rattle and are, I think frail, and will someday have an issue.
Careful. you are also describing a few of us owners who hang around here!
Seriously, I have some donor SA mirrors if someone wants to scan them. I think the most critical area would be the shape size and contour of where the glass fits in. But there is more to it than just that. The original design makes it necessary to assemble the head to the base, before the glass is installed. You need the access to hold the stud in place while compressing the spring and installing the washer and tension nut in the base.
About the only way to get the original glass out intact, would be to sacriface the original housings by carefully cutting them in half, so that you can slide em apart and off the glass lens. I suppose you could do that and re use the glass in new, printed housings.
Without the original glass you run into additional problems. Custom glass from a local supplier is made from fractional sized stock, while the original design used a thinner, metric sized stock. I tried to have a replacement lens made up a couple years back, but could not get the fractional sized stuff to fit in the original shell. To use new glass would require some re-contouring of the original shell where it fits into.
This can all be done but by the time you buy new, printed housings, plus maybe new glass, I wouldn't expect to it to be exactly cheap. The single lens I had made was $60 and got sacrificed to the rotary gods.
Yeah, I always wondered how these mirrors were assembled. I never had the nerve to try to disassemble mine. My passenger mirror has the typical glass rattle which I tried to calm by stuffing card stock in the edges but that didn't last.
Good job on these, they definitely look unique from stock. Has anyone added the JDM one's on their car -I always thought these were cool AF but have no clue how difficult it would be to do.
Mazda used 2 versions of fender mirrors, powered and non-powered. Both versions mount the same and would be doable but do involve a fair number of parts. The powered ones are obviously more complex and expensive but controlled by the same joy stick controls that came on the North American LS and 10th A/E SA's.
They may look cool but can be a pain in the a** when working in the engine bay. The other main drawback is the OEM ones are pretty hard to find anymore and very expensive if you do. Prices can go between $600 - $1200 depending on condition. It's probably much easier and far lass expensive to find a pair of aftermarket manual ones, that look good and can just be screwed to the top of the fender.
I wonder, did you consider 3d scanning an original mirror at all?
This is interesting as my 46 year old mirrors rattle and are, I think frail, and will someday have an issue.
Nice job!
I unfortunately don't have access to a 3d scanner and even if I did the ND mirrors are considerably larger than the stock FB mirrors so it wouldn't really work anyways. In the end the only thing I really copied from the original mirror is the base by simply taking a photo of it and scaling it in fusion.
Can someone put a picture of the FB(SA22 here in Australia) the way u described the mounting I think u guys run different mirrors to us......
FB mirrors should be the same as your Series 2 and mount the same. The original poster has an FB and mounted his custom made units just like the originals were. I think you may have gotten confused when I posted pictures of the JDM fender mirrors in response to a question. My apologies to the original poster for helping to sidetrack his thread about his mirrors. And now, back to our regular programming....
FB mirrors should be the same as your Series 2 and mount the same. The original poster has an FB and mounted his custom made units just like the originals were. I think you may have gotten confused when I posted pictures of the JDM fender mirrors in response to a question. My apologies to the original poster for helping to sidetrack his thread about his mirrors. And now, back to our regular programming....
Sidetracking threads is fun dude, don't worry about it.
On another note he may have the euro style mirrors as seen in the picture.
