"Tiny" Side View Mirror

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

The Vitalonis are the swap meet items? Do they normally mount with two screws in the sheet metal?

Gerrelt has a story on his website on grafting Vitalonis onto the stock VW mount. That's been on my to-do-someday list so I'd be interested in your impressions.

Yep,swap meet specials.Couple bucks apiece.In mid-1980s ROAD & TRACK their asking $14.95 for the 'mini-Tonado's' like I found.
The ball-and-socket joint is at the mirror housing stalk interface,then they screw/bolt the stalk to the base,which screw-attaches to the car.
Looks like SCCA,LeMans,and F-1 racers used them (in photographs).
I removed the base and attached the stalks to steel angle brackets which in turn bolt to the top of the Toyota ball-socket steel pressing.Goofy-looking!
I think I like them but I'm extremely vigilant in traffic.
One of my neighbors was killed in a head-on two weeks ago.Some Texans seem to believe they live in Deadwood S. Dakota.Anything can happen around here.
I'll do a couple hundred-miler this weekend 'n see what they're like on the open road.
Tufting the door glass would be good to do,as well as holding my tuft wand out the open window for a look at the flow.Also some long tufts on the stalk and housing themselves.
Mirrors appear to be scaled as a function of design aesthetics rather than optics.A Tundra/T-100/Camry/and Echo will have similar mirrors of different size,even though the driver's eyes are the same distance from the reflective surface.
Some of the 2015s are paying attention to this,especially the supercars.

[freebeard]

Bummer about your neighbor.

I look forward to pix. Gerrelt's solution doesn't move the mirror further out.

[aerohead]

I mounted an OEM unit on a tripod and parked it next to the Vitaloni for a comparison


Kinda blurry.Low light,could have benefited from the tripod.
They sit well outside from the originals,in slower air.
They're not 2015 Scuderia Cameron Glicenhaus SCG003,or 2017 Ford GT,but they're getting there.

[freebeard]

That really doesn't look too bad. The base is still a little clunky, but what are you going to do?

If the silver washer were replaced with a black hemispherical cap to fit the recess in the base, and the fastener underneath was shortened or cleaned up, that would pretty good.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

That really doesn't look too bad. The base is still a little clunky, but what are you going to do?

If the silver washer were replaced with a black hemispherical cap to fit the recess in the base, and the fastener underneath was shortened or cleaned up, that would pretty good.

The actual metal superstructure under the plastic shrouding is only about half as thick as the plastic suggests.
I don't want to destroy the OEM plastic,but if I remove the base from the door,I may be able to remove part of it to expose the thinner structure and open up attachment possibilities.
And I'm not averse to cutting and welding on the mirror stem to create a cleaner integration.
I want to end up with an airfoil section as a 'stalk'.
I want to deepen the caps like the nose of a GAVRE artillery projectile.
There is a study about optimizing box-cavities for mirrors that I want to use.
And blend both ends of the stalk to kill any hook-vortices which would otherwise form.
From an open window and 'palmaero' I can feel the pulsation of a Karmann Vortex Street behind the unit.
So far,I like them.
I did add an additional passenger inside blind-spot mirror from AUTO ZONE as per Bam-Zip-Pow's example.It's really helpful when rubber-neckers linger in the blind spot.

[aerohead]

On the way to do Ecomodder on Saturday I hit a local Habitat for Humanity store and got a bag of yarn and some large kitchen spoons/ladles.
With some blue tape I got some tufts on the new mirror stalk and housing to look at on the 100-miler west that afternoon.
12-inchers immediately knitted themselves into a web of chaos behind the mirror.I shortened them to 6-inches and they still wanted to congregate in the wake.I clipped 'em down to 4-inches which prevented entanglement.
As I drove,I reached out the window with the spoon and ladle,both as parachutes and reversed open back forms.
As parachutes they bent the handles back remarkably unless I came within about 4-inches of the mirror glass,then they'd get sucked into the wake vacuum.
With the 'soft' face forward they were easier to handle and were also 'sucked' into the mirror wake.
Only a single tuft,mounted about midway to the mirror remained flying rearwards.This is good news,as it suggests that the mirror disruption is isolated away from the T-100's side.
The next look will be with some sort of additional streamlining to the housing and stalk.
For the stalk I'll use the center profile from this table

For the housing I'll use something like the leading edge portion of this wing section to get parallel flow established at the mirror glass,then a bit of boat-tailed box-cavity behind it.

[freebeard]

Have you looked for a drawing of the door bracket disassembled? I predict a C-channel facing downward.

If you had a clear plastic truncated boattail over the mirror, it would only need a window in the inner face to allow you to see into it (and the truncation to see out). A good approximation would be a baloney-cut cone, down to an 'eyebrow'. It could be an extension of your deepen bullet.

Only a driver-side mirror? If you invert the stalk so it slants down instead of up, can you still see into the mirror?

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Have you looked for a drawing of the door bracket disassembled? I predict a C-channel facing downward.

If you had a clear plastic truncated boattail over the mirror, it would only need a window in the inner face to allow you to see into it (and the truncation to see out). A good approximation would be a baloney-cut cone, down to an 'eyebrow'. It could be an extension of your deepen bullet.

Only a driver-side mirror? If you invert the stalk so it slants down instead of up, can you still see into the mirror?

*I'm going to maintain Toyota's bracket for the short term.Without the mirror,it's a fairly good representation of a camera bud.I want to wind tunnel test this.
*I'm unsure if a clear plastic boat tail behind the mirror wouldn't create 'fun house' optical aberrations trying to see through it.I'm willing to live with some base drag,but I know the forebody of all the mirrors are completely 'wrong.'
I've culled photos from maybe 50 magazines now and have seen some really good looking designs from either supercars,or dedicated full-race cars.No serious racers are using OEM mirrors.
*I'm running mirrors for both sides plus inside blind-spot mirrors.(thanks BamZipPow!) Rubber-neckers are just too stupid in traffic and there's no way to have too much visual information available.
*As to the stalks,the mirrors are manufactured for left or right and can't be used on the opposite side.The ball sockets have limited range of motion even on the 'correct' side.
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An interesting tidbit showed up screening the mags.The drag coefficient for one of the Thrust,rocket-powered LSR cars was given.At subsonic velocity it was Cd 0.33 with the engine off,and Cd 0.30 with the engine on.
If we had a source of waste air pressure in the car,we might be able to actively 'blow' the mirrors (as has already been examined with passive blowing),perhaps cancelling their drag altogether.
But for now,I'll be happy to reduce their frontal area,lower their drag,and move them away from the car to reduce their interference.

[aerohead]

I took some hobby shop aerodynamic balsa wood, baseboard moulding,and blue tape and created rudimentary fairings for the driver's side mirror.
It's pretty crude,but the tufts show an improvement.The flow is not along the axis of travel and I'll have to 'bend' the fairings to align with the flow,now that I can 'see' it.They're like airfoils approaching stall right now,but straight flow off their tails.
This morning I found an alarm clock at the thrift store for under $5.
It's shape is exactly like Porsche used on the 1996 911 GT side-views.I can make a mold from half of it and layup some housings for elliptical glass.It couldn't be better!
Yep!,I need a 12-step program!

[changzuki]

Bicycle mirror on a car - it's a wonderful idea!
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~CrazyJerry