Wing mirror replacement buying guide
Wing mirrors play a vital part of a vehicle that enable us to drive safely and to be fully aware of all other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians around your car. If your wing mirror is damaged, even the easiest driving manoeuvres such as switching lanes, can become extremely dangerous! Driving without two fully functional wing mirrors can lead to an accident waiting to happen, or have the police pulling you over.
Nowadays, it's even easier to replace broken or damaged wing mirrors, covers or glass. And when the time comes for your car's annual MOT, if the wing mirror is broken or faulty, it will receive an instant fail.
Here at Wing Mirrors World, we stock different types of wing mirror replacement options:
Full wing mirror units
To replace your original wing mirror, you’ll need to look at the features that your wing mirror unit already had:
- Manual mirrors. Was your original wing mirror a manual mirror that required you to move the mirror glass by hand to the ideal position?
- Cable mirrors. Was your original wing mirror a cable mirror that required you to adjust the mirror glass using a manual lever inside the vehicle?
- Electric mirrors. Was your original wing mirror an electric mirror that allowed you to adjust the mirror glass using a button or joystick inside the vehicle?
- Heated mirrors. Some wing mirrors have heating elements in them to keep mirrors free from ice, fogging and dimming in the colder months. If you’re unsure of whether your mirror was heated, look for a heating symbol on or close to the electric mirror adjustor. Alternatively, remove the old glass mirror from the unit to discover if there are electric cables attached to the rear of the glass.
- Folding mirrors. Folding wing mirrors automatically move inwards when a vehicle is parked and locked.
- Puddle lamps. Some vehicles will have wing mirrors fitted with small lights, known as puddle lamps, which light the floor around the front doors when it is unlocked.
- Inbuilt indicators. Was your original wing mirror fitted with an inbuilt indicator?
- Offside or nearside. Nearside (passenger) wing mirrors always have convex glass to offer the perfect peripheral vision from the driver’s seat. Offside (driver) wing mirrors have glass that’s very often flat.
- Painted, sprayed, colour-coded wing mirror cover. Here at Wing Mirrors World, we offer an in-house painting service from one of our heated spray booths. If your wing mirror needs painting, simply choose this painting service option, leave us your paint code (or vehicle registration number) and we will have this sprayed to match the manufacturers paint code.
Replacement wing mirror glass
If you find that your wing mirror glass is cracked but the rest of the wing mirror unit’s housing is still in tact, it’s possible to carry out a simple replacement of the mirror glass. Make sure you're aware of whether you need a replacement offside or nearside mirror glass as they will dictate whether you buy glass that is convex or flat to aid your perspective at the wheel.
Replacement wing mirror covers
In some cases, the housing of your wing mirror cover can be scuffed or cracked. You might experience a ‘ding’ against another vehicle on the road or you might be unfortunate enough to have someone criminally damage your vehicle overnight.
If the housing is cracked or snapped open, exposing the internals of the mirror, you can find mirror covers that are the same colour as the rest of the body of your vehicle. If you find one that is an unpainted black colour, you can always get it sprayed to match the rest of the vehicle.
www.wingmirrorsworld.co.uk