Thinking of fitting short arm mirrors

Has anyone else considered swapping their mirrors on the Peugeot based coachbuilt models to the shorter arm doors mirrors as fitted to the Peugeot boxer vans? We lost our offside mirror when coming down a hill with a bend when a kind French man in a work van coming in the opposite direction decided to cut the corner not helped by the speed he was going and just smashed the mirror to bits! Not that impressed with the impact absorbing feature of the mirror guard which just got ripped off with everything else!

The short arm mirrors will fit I have been advised by AS and should reduce the width of the vehicle by about 2" each side and as the length of the current long arm mirrors are excessively long I'm seriously considering this upgrade as you can buy a pair of the mirrors (non genuine) for way less than just a single mirror through Peugeot would cost.

Either way I have to at least replace what's left of the current mirror, so for me it's a non brainier really  

Btw what is it with the French cutting corners and driving on the white lines which we encountered daily on our travels.... They drive like idiots in my opinion and the further south you go the worse they appear to be!

CC

Hi CC
Sorry to read about your bump with the French works van, my drivers side mirror took a hit from a Transit tipper van whilst driving out of Killin last month, although it wasn't a direct hit, it smashed the transit vans wing mirror of the arm, so I'm pleased with the mirror guards.
Good luck with your wing mirror change over, hope you had a nice holiday in France, apart from the wee bump.
Boaby

Hi there,

Swapping wing-mirrors with oncoming traffic on the narrow mountain roads of Scotland was a regular feature of living in the area.

I found it best to be amiably philosophical and adopt a "knock-for-knock" attitude right up until on one occasion the driver of the other vehicle jumped out of his Land-Rover and started swearing at me.

I think it was only when I jumped out of the van that he realised his stupidity; which he then compounded by running right past his own vehicle and up a dead-end road that lead only to a mountain car-park.

I had a pleasant chat with his wife, who our hero had left sitting in the Land-Rover, and we agreed that it definitely was a "knock-for-knock" problem.

Happy days.


PS

I'm hoping that my new "dash-cam" will help resolve problems like this.  

But I'm still a bit dubious about saying something like "It was all my fault officer and I have the video to prove it."  

Hi CC,
I,ve done this.
I reported in a previous thread how it's possible to bash both mirrors at the same time in our narrow lanes, plus the various 'meetings'!  
Eventually got to the point where there was more black gaffer tape than ABS.
Mind, we do have the benefit of reversing sensors with readout and a number plate camera - I found you do have to rely on these slightly more.
I also had the benefit of inspecting a local coachbuilt horsebox, built on the same chassis, fitted with short-arm mirrors.
Obviously, you do lose some arc of vision but I found I quickly compensated.
If I had never experienced the long arm mirrors, I would have probably accepted the vision shortcomings as one of those idiosyncrasies that we find on the different chassis.

If you're coming down to North Devon you can have a test drive, see what it's like before taking the plunge.

Derek

Hi Derek.... Thanks for the offer  

We got a set of the short arm mirrors and Ive already fitted them and only just read your reply Im afraid, somehow I missed your earlier post about this but I found the mirrors fairly straightforward to swap over and the finished result is a narrower van which should make getting clipped in future a lot less likely.

Like you there Ive found there is a minimal loss of vision but this mainly comes down to how much of the sides of the van you can see compared to the longer arms as they are now adjusted to show the view of whats coming up behind the van. 

I'm not sure if you have mirror guards or not but I was surprised to find that they didn't fit the short arm versions as they fowl the lower arm, this can be overcome by shaving off around a 1/4" though so not too worried and will do this as soon as I can find the time.

Total cost of the mirrors was £165 (pair) and even though they are aftermarket items not genuine Fiat/Peugeot they are not far off in terms of quality and finish. The only difference I could notice was the motors are slightly noisier when adjusting & I get slight interference on the radio when adjusting from the motors, for the price saving I figure I can live with this!

Will post up a few pics and details of removing and fitting of the mirrors in case anyone else is unfortunate enough to have to replace theirs, its certainly not a job that you should go to a main dealer for as I found it took around an hour to replace each one and fairly straight forward even for me to do.

CC