I know, really exciting thread title. But for anyone thinking of trying this, I learned a few lessons on this one. I bought the chrome RH mirror for my 1975 Vette from Corvette Central. This was a dealer installed option back in the day. There is no provision from the factory to mount the mirror unlike the driver's side which has a bracket inside the door skin. The RH mirror mounts with well nuts (about a half inch long rubber tube with a threaded insert in one end). As you tighten the screw into the well nut, the threaded insert pulls in and makes the tube expand; this acts as a sort of nut that tightens against the screw.
The instructions include a template to drill two holes in the door in order to mount the mirror bracket. The template I received was not quite to scale; there is a legend in the bottom corner that references a length of one inch, the reference measured 15/16th of an inch. I enlarged the template on my copier until the reference measured 1 inch.
The instructions do not tell you what size of hole to drill. I measured the well nut and deduced that a 3/8 inch bit would be correct. I driled one hole and found that the well nut fit the hole. I then tried mounting the gasket and bracket and found that the screw was too short to make the threads in the end of the well nut! I pulled everything back out and checked and the screw was about 3/4 of an inch long; what it should have been is 1 inch long. Off to the hardware store I go to get a couple of longer screws. That's when I found out that they are metric M5 .80 screws. I bought 25mm length screws. Back home to try again.
I proceeded to mount the gasket and bracket again through the one hole I had drilled when I found that a 3/8th of an inch hole was just a little loose; the well nut was spinning around as I tried to tighten the screw. I ended up putting a bead of crazy glue around the hole to hold the well nut from rotating. This did the trick. For the second hole, I used a 23/64th drill bit. This held the well nut securely so that I was able to tighten the screw without the well nut spinning. Once the bracket was mounted, it only took a minute to mount the mirror to the bracket.
I hope this helps anyone thinking about mounting a RH mirror on there 70's Vette.
The instructions include a template to drill two holes in the door in order to mount the mirror bracket. The template I received was not quite to scale; there is a legend in the bottom corner that references a length of one inch, the reference measured 15/16th of an inch. I enlarged the template on my copier until the reference measured 1 inch.
The instructions do not tell you what size of hole to drill. I measured the well nut and deduced that a 3/8 inch bit would be correct. I driled one hole and found that the well nut fit the hole. I then tried mounting the gasket and bracket and found that the screw was too short to make the threads in the end of the well nut! I pulled everything back out and checked and the screw was about 3/4 of an inch long; what it should have been is 1 inch long. Off to the hardware store I go to get a couple of longer screws. That's when I found out that they are metric M5 .80 screws. I bought 25mm length screws. Back home to try again.
I proceeded to mount the gasket and bracket again through the one hole I had drilled when I found that a 3/8th of an inch hole was just a little loose; the well nut was spinning around as I tried to tighten the screw. I ended up putting a bead of crazy glue around the hole to hold the well nut from rotating. This did the trick. For the second hole, I used a 23/64th drill bit. This held the well nut securely so that I was able to tighten the screw without the well nut spinning. Once the bracket was mounted, it only took a minute to mount the mirror to the bracket.
I hope this helps anyone thinking about mounting a RH mirror on there 70's Vette.
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