I was thinking about getting a 4/5 panel wink mirror for my 'rolla (and maybe the Samurai too) but all the reports of the mirrors rattling so badly that you can't see anything turned me off. Are they really this bad? Has anyone found a way to stop them from vibrating so much?
The car doesn't have a whole lot of vibration in general, but it's on hard suspension.
They do vibrate a lot but the more firm the mount the better they seem to do. the big issue you will have in a street car is at night when you see 10-12 headlights instead of 2. This is the main reason we took one out of our Chumpcar and went with a wide panoramic.
Is yours a clip-on? If so how does it hold up?
The trick is to build proper brackets for the ends. Don't clip it in. I've run them for many years and really enjoyed them, even at night. I would get worse glare from the side mirrors than I would from the wink.
Yeah I'd build brackets that will go in place of the sun visors, or between them and the roof. The 'rolla has enough tint that I never have to tilt my normal rearview mirror into the night driving position.
Have you got a roll bar in the car?
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I guess I can understand wider mirrors providing more information...but remind me why so many different angles/why are these better than OEM??
The multiple angled mirrors allow for what seems like a single large mirror in the space of a very narrow mirror without having to set it to some sort of crazy angle.
The hardest part with them is getting them low enough to be truly effective without blocking forward vision too badly. It helps to be, um, less statured in nature and/or running low racing seats. Otherwise you have to run them right at the top of the windshield and that can minimize their effectiveness. Wish I had one in the wife's SUV, the blindspots in that damned thing are huge.
I don't have a roll bar in the car. I think I could get the mirror down close to eye level and maybe 2" below the top edge of the side windows, but even with lowish factory seats there's not much headroom to spare.
I had a wink in the Miata, but it was just too dang close to my face, so I bought one of the Broadway 300mm "curve" mirrors off of Amazon. That's what I use in all my cars now.
I'd like to stick to flat mirrors so I can judge distance without looking back...how useful are the extended flat mirrors?
ppddppdd wrote: I had a wink in the Miata, but it was just too dang close to my face, so I bought one of the Broadway 300mm "curve" mirrors off of Amazon. That's what I use in all my cars now.
This is exactly what I used when racing and I liked it so much that I use it in my daily driver too. This keeps continuity between cars as you get used to it. Now if I could find the same mirror with auto dimming feature I would be all set.
In reply to Zeitgeist:
The mirrors are coated to reduce glare, but you should be able to adjust them upward slightly at night if you leave the knobs slightly loose. This should keep the light from your eyes. Personally, I had worse glare from the side mirrors in my cars, than the wink.
As for fitting them in sports care like Miatas, the key is to get them as far forward as possible so they aren't in your face, this isn't always possible, but instead of a 5-panel mirror, one could try a 4 or even a 3-panel mirror.
I have a Wink mirror rigidly mounted in Midlana and don't have any issues with vibration.
What I have had issues with is Wink not using enough glue on the backs of the panels and having them fall out, which happened to a unit I bought back in 1983 or so. After finishing Midlana this year I bought another Wink, and as I pulled it from the box I wondered if they'd fixed their glue application after 30 years. Nope, a panel dropped out of the brand new unit as it was removed from its box.
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