Well, my auto dim/heated/wide angle (aspherical) side view mirrors arrived from Riga, Latvia (thank you eBay & Volodja Borovik) the day after Christmas...and I finally got a chance to install them. It was really easy to remove the mirror glass once you find the sweet spot that allows you room to lift upward on the glass.
I wanted to get some good side by side comparison shots...but it snowed over night and recovered the parking lots & drives that I was using to give some visual markers & perspective of the increased visibility the aspherical mirrors give.
The original "convex" mirror on the passenger side, has the same reflective ratio as the aspherical mirrors...until you get to the line on either the far left (driver's side) or the far right (passenger's side) of the glass which "bends" the reflection out a little further. Plus there's no warning to tell you that the
"objects in mirror are closer than they appear".
Since they are so expensive...one could really just replace the one mirror for the driver's side...it is what really made me cough up the dough for the wide angle mirror...the increased visibility is awesome. I can now see straight down both sides and across 3-5 lanes of traffic easily. I took the pics sitting straight in the driver's seat with the camera in front of my face as to emulate looking into the mirrors from the driver's point of view.
Side mirror site line:
- plain mirror (driver's side) = approx 12° viewing angle
- convex mirror (pass side) = approx 20° viewing angle
- aspherical wide angle mirror (driver/passenger side) = approx 45° viewing angle
(driver's side - can see from the front door handles back)
(passenger's side - can see from the front door handles back)
(original driver's side mirror has 1:1 reflective ratio)
(wide angle driver's side - the black line in the snow (the curb) is actually straight all the way across...it just looks curved due to the "bent" mirror section on the right side of the dotted line in the glass)
(original passenger side "convex" mirror)
(wide angle mirror passenger's side - it snowed overnight & covered the drive...but you can use the telephone poles/street lights/trees for comparative perspective)
