M3 mirror conversion installed

[Sockethead]

This is something I've wanted to do for a while but just never had the time and it takes some serious time.
I wanted CF mirror shells to compliment my CF splitters and diffuser and the only way to get them is by doing the M3 mirror conversion.
This job is probably the most tedious job I've done yet on my car. I'd rather do a couple of diff swaps than do one of these again.
The installation has been covered in many threads here so I'm only going to touch on the sucky things I came across:
First, the ribbon cable connector is fragile as hell. Both of mine tore just trying to disconnect them. Im still trying to figure out how to repair them. I've never seen ribbon cable tear so easily. I've worked on hundreds of laptops servers etc. and never tore a single one. If I had to do it again, I'd reinforce the ribbon at the connector with some good tape.

I followed Rogue Engineering's instructions for the base plate completely. I used an air powered cut off wheel and that worked really well. Test fitted until perfect. I also ground a groove in the bottom rear of the base plate to hold it in and mate better with the flange of the door

Make sure you use heavy gauge/rigid plastic to make the adapter plates. I thought the stuff I used was good enough but by drivers side mirror vibrates because the plastic is too flexible. Again, your going to have to test fit over and over and egg out the holes to get everything to line up which is really hard because you're working with an odd shaped mirror.

Marking the new holes in the door took some creativity. I cut off two bolts and ground the ends into points and screwed into the mounting holes. I then put blue tape on the door where I figured the holes would go. The points bit into the tape and I had my holes marked. I used LockTight blue on the original screws to hold them on.

Big thanks to Charlie for the adapter plate template and giving me his old set of euro mirror glass so I could get them done in time for the meet!

I haven't seen any pics of the adapter plate in the shell without the motor...kinda gives you an idea of how the motor is oriented in the shell
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/qaregazy.jpg

Here are the screws used to mark the holes.

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/e9esesyz.jpg

Mirror test fit process

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/evahytu7.jpg

The finished product

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/e6ujahem.jpg

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/5ygeraqu.jpg

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/06/07/burahe2u.jpg

[Avetiso]

Wow, those mirrors look fantastic.

[Pip]

Great job!! That was a super tedious job when I did mine, but in the end worth it. I tore one of my cables and was able to repair it for a coupe months, but the tear was so close to the motor that it was not salvageable long term and I just bought a new mirror motor with cable.

[Sockethead]

Great job!! That was a super tedious job when I did mine, but in the end worth it. I tore one of my cables and was able to repair it for a coupe months, but the tear was so close to the motor that it was not salvageable long term and I just bought a new mirror motor with cable.

Yea I hated doing this mod but the end result speaks for itself.
How did you repair it? It sucks that the motors are junk just because of the connector on the end of the cable...

[ELCID86]

Nice job Rob.

[johnrando]

Very nice. Where did you get the covers from?

sent from a galaxy

[Sockethead]

Very nice. Where did you get the covers from?
Kpro got them for me at Turner for Christmas :santa1

[cakM3]

Rob, I'm glad I had the opportunity to help you out brotha :thumbsup You helped me out greatly by installing my LSD on my ZHP when I purchased it from you and then you helped set up my old diff for transfer....I couldn't ask for a better friend to do my install... the least I could do is help you in your M3 side mirror retrofit ;)

Those mirrors look perfect on your ZHP my friend!!! :thumbsup

[Fenrir]

That looks awesome!

[MrMaico]

Looks great! I'd love to have some on mine but I don't know if I'd have the patience to get it all done. I couldn't believe how thin those ribbons are when I saw them on mine.

[webster]

I just said screw it and didn't even bother with the motors. Manual mirrors for me. Losing the reverse tilt feature was the biggest downside, but overall I prefer the aesthetics of the m3 mirrors enough to make it justifiable.

Looks great Rob!

[MrMaico]

I just said screw it and didn't even bother with the motors. Manual mirrors for me. Losing the reverse tilt feature was the biggest downside, but overall I prefer the aesthetics of the m3 mirrors enough to make it justifiable.

Looks great Rob!

Hmmmm..........not a bad idea! I could probably live without motors too. I know Realoem says the ribbon cables are NLA but the number came up when I input it at TheBMWPartsStore so I put an order in and will see what happens. I'm guessing I will get a call or email saying they are NLA.

But I like your idea Webster! Gonna have to give it some more thought.

Barry

EDIT: it looks like it's a bit over $500 for a new set of primed mirrors with the glass included. Just have to add for the cost of painting. Not cheap for manual adjust mirrors but they sure do look good!

[webster]

I got the mirror housings from a salvage shop for about $250. One of them was silver grey, the other was imola. It was another $60 to get the imola painted. Then I sprung for the euro aspherical mirrors@ $200 from ECS. The diy without the motor/cable transfer was super easy, plug and play. Took about 30 mins. So all told, about $500. One of my favorite mods though, really completes the car's curves. The Euro glass also completely eliminates blind spots and even allows pretty good field of vision down to the ground (to compensate for loss of reverse tilt).

[Pip]

I rocked manual mirrors after I broke my ribbon cable for almost a year until I decided to sell the car. Figured I needed to get it working for the new owner.

[johnrando]

Hmmmm..........not a bad idea! I could probably live without motors too. I know Realoem says the ribbon cables are NLA but the number came up when I input it at TheBMWPartsStore so I put an order in and will see what happens. I'm guessing I will get a call or email saying they are NLA.

But I like your idea Webster! Gonna have to give it some more thought.

Barry

EDIT: it looks like it's a bit over $500 for a new set of primed mirrors with the glass included. Just have to add for the cost of painting. Not cheap for manual adjust mirrors but they sure do look good!

Let us know what you come up with.

[Tnhl1989]

What are the part numbers for the ribbon cables?

[JupiterBMW]

Looks really good Rob! I would love to do CF M3 mirrors someday, like you said, a nice compliment to the splitters. :thumbsup

[Sockethead]

Thanks for the compliments everyone. Yea I'm just going to leave the motors the way they are for now... the last thing I feel like doing is a complete mirror teardown again. It sucks that the driver mirror vibrates so much but I can fix that with the mirror on the car.

I never heard the ribbon cable was available as a replacement part. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the motor but it looked like it was permanently sandwiched between the motor halves. If anyone can think of a way to repair the ribbon cable ends, that would be great. The original connector is crimped on the ribbon but the crimps are so small it looks like it would be next to impossible to reuse them...

The shells were $200.00 from Turner and they are the complete shell not a cover. There are less expensive ones on eBay as well as covers but you never know the quality or source of some of those...

[pilotnick1203]

Looks sharp +1


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[328ioc]

Looks really good Rob! I would love to do CF M3 mirrors someday, like you said, a nice compliment to the splitters. :thumbsup

I'll just come visit in July so you can drool over my Imola M3 mirrors. :)

Mirrors look excellent rob!

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[MrMaico]

Let us know what you come up with.

Got an e mail from them Monday morning, along with a Paypal refund, saying they tried to order from BMW but it came back as discontinued. Bummer!


What are the part numbers for the ribbon cables?

I was assuming they were #6 here......

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=BD53&mospid=47713&btnr=51_3692&hg=51&fg=07

[Tnhl1989]

Strange the link you gave has different part numbers than the one for my car.

Your CI has these for part numbers - 67138379009 67138379010
While my car has these for part numbers - 67138379003 67138379004

I'm going to talk to my parts guys to see what are these parts exactly. Maybe we can get lucky and hopefully these are the ribbons :)

[Sockethead]

I had to swap out one of my CF mirror shells due to a defect.
While I was in there I decided to replace the plastic motor adapter plate as I've noticed some vibration while driving. This time I sacrificed an aluminum clipboard. This worked out perfectly and it wasn't any harder than doing it with plastic.
BTW Turner Motorsports had awesome customer support for the replacement
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/09/25/ape7u4a3.jpg

[cakM3]

Very nice Rob!!! This is something I will eventually have to do.......someday......

[Sockethead]

Yea I still have to replace the driver's side adapter with aluminum too. That is the one that's vibrating... I just did the passenger side because I ready had it apart... No one looks forward to taking mirrors apart

[Tnhl1989]

I would love to cast a 3d printed mold for the adapter. I have a buddy that just finish a metal 3d printer. If you happen to have the diagram I can have him make the adapters.

[az3579]

I would love to cast a 3d printed mold for the adapter. I have a buddy that just finish a metal 3d printer. If you happen to have the diagram I can have him make the adapters.

This would be sooooooooo nice... my mirrors never sat right. :(

[Sockethead]

The problem is that it's really hard to guess where the mirror will be centered when making the adapters So you end up egging out the mounting holes. It's a trial and error process and by the time it's done the adapter plate looks like crap.
That being said, when I made the aluminum adapter, I was able to transfer the mounting holes pretty accurately. I wish I had made a template but its just one of those things that you just want to get over with.
When I do my driver's side I'll make a template that all you guys can borrow...

[cakM3]

The problem is that it's really hard to guess where the mirror will be centered when making the adapters So you end up egging out the mounting holes. It's a trial and error process and by the time it's done the adapter plate looks like crap.
That being said, when I made the aluminum adapter, I was able to transfer the mounting holes pretty accurately. I wish I had made a template but its just one of those things that you just want to get over with.
When I do my driver's side I'll make a template that all you guys can borrow...

Yeah, I know how that feels...my driver's side is not perfect and that was just over two years ago....haven't gotten back to it yet...

maybe if there was a good template and I got a set made up in metal like you did Rob, I might just revisit these....

[Tnhl1989]

Well maybe I can get a buddy to 3d scan the internal housing and print it work the adapter built into it. Solves all the problems at once.

[JupiterBMW]

I have some extra sheet metal from when I made mine. I have been planning to make some for the guys here, just haven't gotten around to it. As well, since its only a thin piece of sheet metal, we should get a good set of templates and send them to a place that can stamp them. We don't need fancy 3D printing or anything, its a very simple part to make...

[Sockethead]

Sounds great. I found the hardest part was getting the mirror centered just right without egging out the holes if we can get a template that's accurate, this mod wouldn't be such a PITA...

[Tnhl1989]

Metal 3d printer ftw. Actually he lives in Fort Myers, FL and the company is http://swfl3d.com/.