Repairing Type 9 Mirror Mounts

[Gary Lewis]

Recently I decided I wanted to swivel the head on Big Blue's Type 9 passenger-side mirror and ran into a problem.  The ball that the mirror swivels on was rusted in place and it was pretty obvious that I was very likely to damage the mirror before the ball let loose.  So I hit it with PB Blaster and it still wouldn't swivel.

The next attempt was to remove the mirror from the mounting arm by removing the Torx screw on the bottom.  But it loosened enough to make the mirror flop on the arm and then seized and couldn't be tightened nor loosened.  And when I tried to clamp the stem of the mirror to get that screw out it spun and marked the stem.  

So I went to my stash and found another mirror which would swivel on its mount, but there was no lower mount on the arm.  That meant I had one arm with two mounts and a bad mirror, and one arm with a good mirror and only one mount.

Given that, I drilled the rivet out that holds the lower mount to the arm and put it on the arm with a good mirror.  The rivet is very soft and drills easily.  And when it came out it left a hole that a 5/16" bolt fit quite nicely.  I used these stainless steel 5/16"-18 truss-head screws and underneath the mount I used a stainless washer and a stainless nyloc nut.  Plus I put the Nylon washer between the arm and the mount.

Here are some pics.  The truss-head screw isn't a perfect match for the screws Ford used to mount the mirror to the door, but it is pretty close.

Having said all that, I recommend that you spray some lube up into your mirrors so they can swivel on the mount.  Otherwise you may be following my lead.  But if you have mirror arms with a broken rivet to the lower mount, there's an easy fix that looks fairly "stock".

[1986F150Six]

Looks good, Gary.

[Gary Lewis]

Thanks, David.  The goal was to make it so much like the other screws that the vast majority of people would never know it isn't original.  I hope I succeeded in that.

[salans7]

Repair looks like it will hold nicely! Well done!

[Gary Lewis]

Thanks, Shaun.  But looking back at the pics I'm wondering if a washer under the head of the bolt would make it look more like the factory screws.  Thoughts, guys?

I may try it this afternoon and we'll see what it looks like.

[salans7]

I doubt anybody is ever going to notice that, but if the engineer in you feels that a washer is the right move, try it out.

[81-F150-Explorer]

I think the washer would make it look exactly like the factory ones.

At least to my eyes.

[Gary Lewis]

[BigBrother-84]

We often hear that «God is in the details».


But I also heard (mostly for contract questions) «Devil is in the details».


Who can say?

[Gary Lewis]

LOL!  I always heard the devil was in the details.  But I think I just like paying attention to the details.