Mirrors

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Matt Danning's suggestion of rivet-nuts as retainers for the outside rear-view
mirror is a reasonable one (and a variant has been used by Alfa on some cars),
but all things being equal (which they never are, quite) I would prefer to
stay with methods that did not risk breaking the paint film and which did not
complicate eventual repainting. The original Alfa variant which I have met on
some 116 cars has (if I remember correctly, not always the case) a square nut
and a square cage with two prongs projecting through, and turned down outside,
a rectangular hole in the door skin. The advantage of the rectangularity is
that when (not if) the nut rusted onto the bolt there is something to resist
spinning the nut, which might not be the case if the rivet-nut is through a
round hole.

George Beston is correct (thank you) in remembering the stock three-hole
backing plate which I had forgotten. Its part number is (or was; Fiat dumped
the AR number system, along with much else that was good) 105.03.61.304.00,
and it is quite possible that one of the good people at Highwood or Hurtienne
(or even Mastro, Spruell, etc) might be able to get the OEM part for a
purist.

George asks "The OE mirrors that I have are conical, but have no AR logo cast
into them on the nose of the housing. As far as I can determine, one of them
came with my Spider Jr. and the other was OE on a 105.71 Berlina.    I have
also seen them on a few other Alfas from the late sixties.  My question is,
were the nearly identical mirrors with the logo OE or were they an aftermarket
upgrade that came about at a later time?  Or, were both OE at different
times?"

I believe all that I have had (plated, on a new '71 GT Veloce and a new '72
Berlina, and unplated primered from ARI Newark sometime in the late seventies)
have the logo, and it is shown with the logo, as 105.64.61.017.03, on p.208 of
the 1974 Catalogo Rapido for all 105 cars, so 'with logo' was certainly 'a'
stock OE design. Centerline carries a reproduction with logo; IAP carries both
with and without, saying that 'with' was used on '67-'74 Spiders and GTVs and
'without' was used on earlier Alfas as well as Ferrari and Maserati. As far as
I can tell the Duetto had the round conicals from the beginning, and it is
quite possible that when the Duetto was introduced in March '66 the
conical-without-logo was an ubiquitous new design - on Ferrari, Maserati,
Alfa, and available on the open market - which got the logo later for Alfa
applications but may have still found its way onto some Alfas without logo at
later dates if there were supply problems. The non-logo version probably had
the same main part number with an .00, .01, or .02 suffix in place of the
.03.

I can't answer Paul Leone's question about new rubber gaskets between glass
and shell on his Vitaloni mirrors, and would be surprised if the gasket was
available, but in a worst-case it should be possible to cast replicas in an
RTV silicone if the shell can be disassembled. There are books on casting
small rubber and plastic parts, tedious but low-tech, and I believe it is
fairly routine in restoration circles.

John H.

Raleigh, N.C.

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