Morris Minor

I've seen this discussion for other cars (mainly MGs) of that period and the consensus seems to be that the mirror should be in line with the front wheel centre. How does that look on a MM?

dan

Looks apart, you need to position it so the image is the same size as the one in the rear view mirror.

The bonnet has a bulge in it, which makes it a lot higher than the top of the wings, and it gets worse the nearer you get to the windscreen. A mirror placed on the nearside wing in line with the front wheel centre would be invisible to the driver, unless either the driver or the mirror were particularly tall.

I phoned Charlie Ware's in the end. Apparently though wing mirrors were not fitted to saloons as a factory fit, they were an optional extra on the Traveller and a standard fit on vans. The location for the hole is on the very top of the wing and 8 inches back from the front edge.

I have just measured, and that places them level with the front edge of the front tyres. And a mock-up with cardboard shows that location to be clearly visible on both wings if a 100mm mirror stem is used.

So problem solved, but I thought I would put the details here for posterity.

Jim

Well, I have established the correct location (see my other message) and have ordered the round mirrors with convex glass because that was the Morris standard. [1]

I can only hope that when they arrive they are compatible with the interior mirror for image size.

Jim

[1] I once had a car fitted with flat glass wing mirrors, and the headlamp glare from following vehicles was intense at times, so I would have ordered convex regardless.

Looks about correct, I was trying to find an old photo of mine which was a ute, that had wing mirrors, this was require of you had the back loaded. Remember they rotated easily, always straightening them up.

Out of interest, this must have been a pursuit car,

Thanks for the link - it made me smile. And it has wing mirrors roughly where I am about to put mine!

As an aside, I looked around the rest of the site and found Mildred's picture. The "eyebrows" over the headlamps are wrong for the year. According to the model variations in the official workshop manual, they were discontinued when the sidelight/indicator was added beneath the headlamp. Mildred has both the side/indicator lights and the eyebrows.

Having said that, I like them, and wish my car had them.

Jim

I thought they were aftermarket additions. My '54 MG Magnette came with them when I bought in in '63.

They were a pretty common bolt-on goody in the fifties and sixties. My first car, a 1954 Standard 8 had them.

Incidentally, they were known to the doctors in A&E as "kidney cutters".

Geoff MacK