Lil" Red Corvette

Yes, unfortunately. The metal structure is a problem for both of the upper bolts. The rear one is close to the original hole and a little bit of dremling is required. I used a 1/2 hole saw on the front one. You have to be very careful not to damage the fiberglass. Also, I had to remove my window to remove my sport mirrors. I will post more pics.

donnie1956

I have had my sport mirrors off a couple of times for paint. Just need to loosen and move the track and the window will slide back enough to get to the rear nut. Did you by chance take any photo's of your inner sheet metal mods?

CWerner

Here's mine: C6

Lil" Red Corvette

I will as soon as I can. I'm actually still in the middle of this install. I only get a couple hours here and there to work on it. Right now I have the drivers door taken apart. The drivers mirror isn't even completely installed yet.

As far as the view goes. It's great! At first I wasn't sure there was going to be an improvement in the rear view just looking out of them down the driveway. I was even thinking of not going through with the project and getting the original style chrome mirrors because they sit up higher.

Than I took it on a test drive with just the drivers side installed. I could see behind me much better than with the sport mirror. I could even see cars that were close and directly behind me. It will be perfect when I get the passenger side one installed.

I don't have a rear view mirror on my car. It bothers me cause it causes a big blind spot in front of me. When you are over 6 foot tall it is a problem. I like the view out of the windshield much better without it. Unfortunately I then have to depend on only the side mirrors to drive. The sport mirrors were not cutting it. The C6 mirrors will.

Lil" Red Corvette

Maybe my sport mirrors were installed back too far. I don't know. When I do the passenger side I will see if I can do it without taking the window out.

I haven't finished the inner sheet metal mods yet but here is one picture of where I am right now. In this picture you can see the old mod that was made for the sport mirror and forward of it is the hole I cut to get to the front mirror bolt. I will take more pictures when I do the rest.

Lil" Red Corvette

If you can't see the mirrors from behind than the driver won't be able to see you......right? A good way to tell the difference between the C6 mirror and the sport mirror is with these pics.

This first one is from directly behind. The sport mirror is on the passenger side.

The next two I tried to take from the same spot behind each side of the car. Notice how you can't even see the sport mirror.

donnie1956

Can't wait to start this modification. I have to remove the drivers door to get repaired from broken door spring so will work on that mirror upgrade while door is off. Will take a few photos's of the mods required.

Lil" Red Corvette

Looks like I am going to have to remove my doors as well if I'm going to make the electrics work on these mirrors. Also, I found out that what bubba did in the past I'm not going to be able to live with. My car has two speakers in the doors, door locks and door poppers. All the wires couldn't go through the original conduit so they drilled another one. Thing is, there is no good place to add another one. What bubba did I don't agree with and it looks like it will be no time before one of the wires shorts to the sharp metal that isn't protected by a grommet. I think I'm going to have to remove the doors and do this right. I'm looking at enlarging the original conduit hole so that more wires will fit through. I have a 88 Camaro parts car that has much larger conduits. Maybe I can make them work on the C3. We will see.

Also, since I'm going to have the doors off maybe I should buy some new door springs myself. Mine are not broken but I don't think they have ever been replaced so I would hate for one of them to break right after doing this. Does the doors have to be removed to install new door springs?

Here is a pic of the mess I have right now.

donnie1956

Springs can be replaced while on door. There is a special tool for bending the spring then hammer up in place. http://willcoxcorvette.com/product_i...ducts_id=25646 Much easier to replace the spring if the door is off.

Lil" Red Corvette

I think I may have found the perfect control for the C6 mirrors. Especially if you are upgrading from the C3 77-82 sport mirrors.

This control came from a late 80s Cadillac. If I can get this to work it is a easy replacement for the sport mirror cable remote. It fits directly in the sport mirror bezel.

Lil" Red Corvette

I got the Cadillac mirror remote to work on the bench today. Now I just need to build my wiring harness. It looks like it is going to require only 4 wires to pass through the door jamb. I will provide a schematic soon.

donnie1956

Do you know model and year of caddy that the switch came from?

Lil" Red Corvette

I took mine off of a 87-93 Cadillac Coupe Deville. Out of a panel that looks exactly like this one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CADILLAC-DEV...s-Seat-Windows

But doing a few google searches it looks like the one from the 94-96 Deville might work as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1994-1995-96...TCH-DRIVER-OEM

The one for the 97-98 looks like it may work as well. It has a plug directly on the back of it.

But the one I used is GM part# 20619687. I quick search on google will show you all kinds of pics and info on it. In doing this research I found out that there are several different GM switches that look like they will work, C4 Corvette, 4rth Gen Camaro and others. But I know that this switch fits perfectly in the 77-82 C3 original bezel and the schematic I am drawing up is for switch 20619687. One thing I also like about this one is that it has a chrome toggle that matches the bezel making it look like it was meant to be there.

Bob Heine

Thanks for the info! I found a switch panel from a 94 Cadillac and it looked great. I even have the bezel very much like the one you show (mine has pins for speed nuts rather than screw holes). My excitement turned to disappointment when I tried to fit the switch to the bezel. It uses a square mount design.


I just bought a 93 Cadillac mirror switch that looks like yours.


On a more positive note, the plug for these switches are the same as the plugs on the Rock Auto mirrors. It's an ACDelco PT219.

kcarlasc

For those that used the round DoorMan control.. how did end up mounting it? Not a lot of plastic to try and use around it..

Lil" Red Corvette

Update: I have my drivers side C6 mirror on the car. I had to enlarge the existing rear hole (for the sport mirror) with a dremel to be able to install the nut. So this was a modification to the sport mirror mod that I did back in the early 90s when I installed the sport mirrors. If you are not upgrading from C3 sport mirrors than you would just use a hole saw to make your access hole.

The bottom C6 mirror mount stud goes directly into the metal structure of the door. It is at a little bit of an angle where I had to drill it but at least you are tightening down to metal instead of fiberglass. On both of the upper (rear and front) mount studs I used flat washers....You are on just fiberglass on these two studs so the bigger the flat washer the better. There is a mounting plate glued to the fiberglass for the original chrome mirror (68-76) but all 3 of my C6 mirror mounting studs miss that plate. Those of you doing this to a 77-82 car will probably have a bigger mounting plate glued to the outer door skin and will have more to work with.

Lil" Red Corvette

Making progress on this project. I now have the door off. I have some good news concerning the wiring between the car and the door. The new replacement conduits having a larger inside diameter than the originals. I thought I was going to have to do a modification to add a 2nd or bigger conduit but everything WILL fit through one of the reproduction conduits. In addition to the original wires for the power windows I have added 4 speaker wires, 2 door lock wires, 1 (large) wire for the door popper, and now 5 (18 gauge) wires for the electric mirrors. Here is a picture of the original and replacement conduit. I bought mine from Zip.

Bob Heine

I managed to wire up the two mirrors to the switch and decided to post a diagram of the wiring. I'm often confused by real wiring diagrams so this is just the connections between the switch pigtail and the two mirror pigtails. It actually makes sense to me now. The passenger mirror is connected to one side of the switch and the driver mirror is connected to the other. Note that only four connections are made on each mirror. If you need to connect the mirror heaters, I think you'll have to install another switch. The photo of one of the connectors shows the letter markings.

worship79

Thanks! Will save me some time when I get around to this project

Gale Banks 80'

When I did this I ended doing this I ended up with 3 or more Mirrors, and I found that the Wire Colors were different from one era of C5 Mirrors to another. In other words a Wiring Color code diagram may work for one Mirror but not another.