Car Mirrors and Truck Mirrors

Adding or replacing a side mirror on your vehicle helps increase visibility as well as safety and allows you to see your vehicle's surroundings better, eliminating any blind spot that might be present. This helps prevent an avoidable accident that could cause you injury or damage to your vehicle.

There are many different options and sizes to choose from when selecting a mirror design for your car or truck. This allows you the freedom to give your vehicle a unique look and style with swan neck mirrors, peep mirrors, and other choices that are available.

The steps to replace or remove a passenger or driver side mirror will be different depending on the year, make, and model of the vehicle. However, in most cases, the instructions are similar. Most mirrors attach to the doors and can be removed by gaining access to the inside of the door shell. This requires removing the interior door trim and any other components that might be in the way such as door handles, lock knobs, switches, wiring, and other components. Once the mirror base mounting can be accessed, any wiring connections for defrost, adjustment, turn signals, etc. need to be disconnected from the mirror. Mirrors are typically anchored to the door with nuts, which are removed next. Then the mirror can be removed along with the gasket. The exterior surface is then cleaned and prepped for the replacement mirror. The new seal is added to the mirror base (usually included) and the new mirror is installed in the reverse order of the old one.

There are many different preferences on how to set up side mirrors and interior mirrors. Ideally, mirrors should be set up so that a vehicle that is behind you on the highway can be seen as it moves to either side of your car or truck and passes you using the rearview mirror and door mirrors without disappearing from sight. This can be done by first centering the rear view mirror on your vehicle's back window. Next, the side mirrors need to be tilted forward/backward so that vehicles will be in the center of the mirror as they pass you or you pass them. The final adjustment is to adjust the mirrors outward/inward, so that vehicles are partly seen in the rearview mirror and the side mirror as well as the side mirror and your front door window at the same time during the transitions. When adjusted properly, the vehicle behind you starts in the center of the rear view mirror, then moves to one side and starts to be seen in the door mirror. As the vehicle moves alongside you, it moves across the side mirror until you see it through your front driver or passenger door window. This allows you to track other vehicle movements completely and eliminates any blind spot that would make them disappear.

The cost to fix a car mirror can vary greatly depending on the year, make, and model. This is especially true for mirrors that have built in blind spot and turn signals, defrost glass, electric adjustment, cameras, and any other technology. Mirrors can range in price anywhere from around $10 each for a basic design to over $1000 for one that is loaded with built-in technology. The labor cost to replace a mirror will also vary, depending on the shop completing the work and the amount of time involved to replace it, which can take minutes or hours to complete.