My next project after the RSD was going to deal with sun roof deletion but I got side tracked! I already had a piece of R8 on my car and it was time to add some R10 memorabilia to it. I always loved the look of these on the race car and it was going to be a piece of cake to put them on the mini. Quick and easy turned into 7 months of work and research and rework and new ideas and more research, rework etc. etc. I knew they had been wind tunnel tested, and run at Le Mans successfully twice, so I would get a couple extra mph and gain a few hp. from low drag, but BLING was the driving force. Plus Sid and Nat with their racing thingies had to be upped.
Still as usual there was the Carbonized “must”: lighter than OEM, use OEM mounting points, and be somewhat stealthy.
The following pics are from the 1st prototypes, mostly fiberglass (except stem and base). The base will not show the screw holes as it is redesigned and retooled at this time. Still lots of work before final full carbon version! I started on this on Nov. 25 07 and with racing season in full swing, it look like i'm looking to 11 25 08 before I’m done with it. This thing has gone wild!!!!!

 

Second set of pix

 

as always in your threads........WOW! those look great!

 

looking forward ot more..

 

Looks great! Are these a "one-off" type thing, or something you could make another set of?

 

If the key word in your post is "could" then the answer is Yes! As I had to build them from scratch, I now have high temp carbon fiber molds for most of the composites parts. The question is how to build them at a reasonable price? It is not the carbon versus glass( as it is a rather small part, area wise) as much as the process (vacuum/heat), and all the other components, 1 set of mini mirror frames, for wire harness, gasket, etc. 1 set of Audi mirror glass, 1 set of pre-04 Audi/BMW/ merc./saab/etc actuator and a few custom CNC'ed parts like the cam locks, witch would all make it prohibitively expensive to this crowd. That being said, I' m not giving up on the idea of producing them. I just have to work around this issues and find someone to produce the carbon parts. Here is a pic of all the parts involved in a "simple" rear view mirror. Keep in mind that both the housing and base are made of 2 or more assembled parts. Did I mention this thing going wild on me?

 

wow... that is cool.

Nice Job man

 

Very nice work. Well done.

 

Love your rims

 

Plain Kosei's K1, affordable, light, strong (don't ask how I know) and easy to clean Love them!!

 

i did PM you a while back but you never got back to me
im sure your busy

 

PM 'ed back sorry for delay, busy is no excuse!

 

carbonized, once again I am in aww of your greatness Man I wish that I could have the pieces that you have on your car [drool]

Those mirrors are a very nice compliment to your wing and it all looks amazing on the Mini!

 

My son and I got to see "Carbo" in action while building the first protos in CF. He invited us over to see the protos be popped out of the mold and then got to see the next step of connecting them to the shafts (vaccum bagging). The amount of work that goes into building the mirrors is 10x what anyone would guess, it's no just the CF but all of the engineering behind it and the sourcing of parts.

I'm not sure if everyone understands that these will be motorized .

Anyone in the area really needs to get an invite to his shed behind the house. First its got a collection of racing parts from cars, he has worked on from an F1 nose to F1 rims. A first rate collection of tools. AND most importantly his little black book containing (no not stripper's numbers) but doodles, notes, measurements of his Mini project ideas.

His cowl scoop, heat extractor, rear wing are truly labors of love. The mirrors will be no less - perfection.

 

Man I wish I was in Florida...that would be the best place to get a second education

 

And for the record guys when Carbo was joining the mirror cap to the shaft, he needed and extra finger (MINE) during the process and my son helped get the vaccum bag together so we GET a manufacturing credit HERE .

 

Dope.

 

Looks Great!!! Ill take two!

 

Freakin' sweet dude! Love all the 1-off pieces.

 

Can anyone tell me a foolproof way of posting pics on this site? It seams that there is no way of posting more than 3 thumbnails at a time, and, most of the time I loose the text in the process . I'm not a tecky by any means ans the world "foolproof" .

 

As long as your pics are hosted some where(whether in your gallery on here or photobucket, flickr, etc) you can post them.
Just right click on the pic and copy the address of where it is, when you go to make a post on here, there is a little yellow box icon with a mountain inside it above the box where you type your post, click on the little yellow box, hit delete, then paste the address you copied from the pic, click ok.

EDIT: I clicked your thumbnail to make it bigger, then copied the image location, and posted it here...

 

This is a dry run of all the fibers and vacuum material stack. Lots of stuff not much space. That's where Bart got his finger in action when all that was wet with epoxy.




This is a pic of the whole thing under vacuum, after is son manned the vacuum valve and helped chase leaks




The entire mirror, body and stem, is laminated in one shot. The shaft that Bart is talking about is a 2 layers pre-cured carbon mandrel that allows me to keep the foil shape until vacuum.

Thanks PARTSMAN for the pic posting guide

 

You're welcome, and awesome job on the mirrors!
(even more impressive knowing that Bart was with you sticking his fingers in there)

 

Its gonna take me a while to interpret exactly how you meant this but once I have I will revert.

 

Bart tries to keep his fingers in all the cool MINI stuff.