van side mirrors

[Rod Garvie]

I am in the process of restoring a 1968 van and i trying to find out where the external mirrors should be. i have looked at various pics and they all diferent. the ones on my van are fixed in to the quater light of the door. you see on some pics that they are either on the door and i have seen some on the wing. can anybpdy let me know where they would hve been fitted when they come out of the factory.
thanks

[POMMReg]

Chrome/Matt black wing mirrors - the mirrors you note are a recent thing,

[GPO_Van]

Hi Rod
On our GPO vans as an engineer1970ish, all ours had large black wing mirrors, great visibility (and a lot of drag) but they might have been fitted by our own in-house garage.
See picture of my mate next to on of our vans as apprentices about 1968 ish before they started fitting the big mirrors, this might have been the original fitted ones
Reg[frame][/frame]

[les]

If you decide that the mirrors go on the wings, then the measurement from the front should be 7inches.

[IaininTenbury]

GPO ones had them on the wings, as in the pic. Later ones had bigger rectangular plastic ones. Very unsubtle but work well.
Early Series 2 vans had them on special stalks screwed onto the screen pillar but they're very unusual
Standard civilian vans, with the price kept as low as poss for commercial users, had no external mirrors as standard (same as the cars) so any fitment was down to the supplying dealer or the owner so there's no standard fitting.
Look around and see what other folk have used. It's striking the balance between being able to see behind and being in keeping with the vehicle. My vcan came with the long wing mirror stalks and rectangular mirrors, as supplied by one of the main parts suppliers. these are sold as 'van wing mirrors' and work well, though are actually Mk1 Transit items, I replaced them with shorter stalks and round mirrors which looked far neater though less effective. Its your call really!

[mike.perry]

Make sure that if you fit wing mirrors you fit the longer arms as mentioned above and also fit convex glass not flat glass mirrors.

[IaininTenbury]

Well I changed mine back to shorter arms purely for aesthetic reasons. Yes you can see better with the long arms, but they just looked like early Transit mirrors to me and out of proportion with the size of the Minor. You can see reasonably well with the shorter arms, and basically you just get used to it.
Convex glass is much better though. Good point that.

What you don't want to have to get used to is three lanes of traffic in the town centre in a Series 2 van with little back windows and no exterior mirrors. Indicate and hope for the best! Not fun....

[mike.perry]

I thought that it was a legal requirement for two external mirrors on a load carrying vehicle, including Travellers and estate cars.
On my 63 van, large back windows, I fitted an extra rear view mirror above the passengers side of the windscreen which gave me a better view through the back window. Sun visor might get in the way if fitted.

[POMMReg]

Is Rod's van ex-GPO?

1968 GPOs = "eyelet" mirror arms with either Blk plastic Wingard or rubber Desmo mirrors.

1968 Civvy = "eyelet" mirror arms with circular black mirrors.

Does this help

[IaininTenbury]

ah yes, I'd forgotten about the little black circular mirrors on late civilian vans. Not sure of a current source of those these days.
MOT requirements only specify two mirrors for commercials in any location, but presumably my tester forgot that when I had the Series 2 MOt'd with only the internal one on....

[1098]

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[1098]

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[POMMReg]

Thanks to Eddie

UXH 143 illustrating correct circular Desmo's (earlier ones were chrome on blk)

SLJ 430H illustrating post '72 mirrors - there were 2 types of blk Wingard's fitted to GPO/PO Minors, raised "GPO" with the small fixing bolt (for the eyelet arms), and the raised "PO" version with the larger fixing bolt/clamp for the later arms.

Sadly, the front design of the White wingard mirrors are totally different to earlier versions!

[Rod Garvie]

thanks to you all
Rod