Sootywg
A2OC Donor
I have recently undertaken the popular uprade to heated door mirrors.
I share this in the hope to help others avoid the disappointment and problems I experienced and also to try and verify what I believe to be a misunderstanding that some of the aftermarket suppliers are under.
Wanting to avoid the high cost of oem mirror glasses especially the heated variety. Based on a2oc threads on the subject I went ahead and bought a pair of heated glasses from ebay, chosing a supplier that appeared to have a good rep.
The mirrors duly arrived quickly and seemed of reasonably quality. Fitting the drivers side was straightforward. The passenger side however immediately seemed a very poor fit in the aperture of the housing.
I therefore checked the new mirror against the original and indeed the profile was subtley different. I also compared it against the drivers side mirror and it was an exact match but lateraly inverted (i.e. a mirror image if you know what I meen)
My conclusion from this is that the left and right mirror housings on the A2 (possibly all cars) are significanly different and not simply a laterally inverted version of each other. The corollary is that mirrors and housings from a lhd car could not be fitted to a rhd car.
Can anybody confirm this?
The ebay supplier I used has tried to be helpful but does not seem to understand the issue they simply suggest that it might just be a production problem with a batch of mirrors.
I have seen in other threads people refer to some poorly fitting mirrors. I wonder how many of these mirror suppliers are simply assuming that the left hand is a laterally inverted version of the right hand.
I have yet to resolve this with the supplier.
Any members experiences that can shed light on this would be welcomed.
Original VAG mirror
After market replacement
Geoff
I share this in the hope to help others avoid the disappointment and problems I experienced and also to try and verify what I believe to be a misunderstanding that some of the aftermarket suppliers are under.
Wanting to avoid the high cost of oem mirror glasses especially the heated variety. Based on a2oc threads on the subject I went ahead and bought a pair of heated glasses from ebay, chosing a supplier that appeared to have a good rep.
The mirrors duly arrived quickly and seemed of reasonably quality. Fitting the drivers side was straightforward. The passenger side however immediately seemed a very poor fit in the aperture of the housing.
I therefore checked the new mirror against the original and indeed the profile was subtley different. I also compared it against the drivers side mirror and it was an exact match but lateraly inverted (i.e. a mirror image if you know what I meen)
My conclusion from this is that the left and right mirror housings on the A2 (possibly all cars) are significanly different and not simply a laterally inverted version of each other. The corollary is that mirrors and housings from a lhd car could not be fitted to a rhd car.
Can anybody confirm this?
The ebay supplier I used has tried to be helpful but does not seem to understand the issue they simply suggest that it might just be a production problem with a batch of mirrors.
I have seen in other threads people refer to some poorly fitting mirrors. I wonder how many of these mirror suppliers are simply assuming that the left hand is a laterally inverted version of the right hand.
I have yet to resolve this with the supplier.
Any members experiences that can shed light on this would be welcomed.
Original VAG mirror
After market replacement
Geoff
Last edited:
