E30 Zone

well, this may seem like a stupid question, but i have the black wing mirrors and want to swap them for body coloured wing mirrors, are they easy to get hold of, and are they avaialble in a wide range of colours... any guidance on this subject greatly appreciated

But a 2nd hand pair, would help if you said what colour your car is...

yeah, i guess so, probably should have included that eh, its like a burgundy red colour, the sitcker in the engine bay says weinrot, assume thats the bmw paint name... never seem to be able to find any on ebay...

buy a couple of cans of spray from bmw using that colour code and give your existing mirrors a paint.£11 for 2 tins off 150ml paint.

I was about to ask the same question.

My '93 Lux Touring has body coloured mirrors with what appears to be a plastic (body-coloured) panel over the mirror base plate. My '89 Cab has black mirrors with (rusting) metal base plate.

Since the corrosion looks quite advanced I'd like to put the plastic type on.

Don't know if plastic base covers are separate & paintable (or available in Luxor Beige Metallic).

One of my electric mirrors was fxxxxd thanks to a near side-swipe from a middle-of-the-road pensionable driver and so needed replacing. I managed to get a pair of body-coloured mirrors out of the parts wanted section here (from bmwe30tech) and they arrived virtually pristine. Took minutes to fit and they look infinitely better than the black plastics.

Hi They are very easy to paint as I did them on my previous car.This is how I did it.
Painting Mirrors

Take them off car
Take mirror glass out
Cover inners with masking tape
Cover wiring/rubber seal with masking tape
Rub down with emery paper
Clean with panel wipe
Spray with undercoat
Rub down with fine wet & dry
Spray with undercoat
Clean with panel wipe
Spray with paint 2 coats
Spray with clear lacquer
I did my spraying with the mirrors hanging on the clothes line.

i just recently did mine. you can order a set which includes base color and clear straight from the dealer. they're 150ml cans and to paint two mirrors you need 4 of them. this is how i did it:

first i took the glass, motor and wires out
sanded with p600
degreased
hit the plastic mirror housing with plastic primer, 2 coats
2 coats of primer
after the primer it is a good idea to sand it down a little with p1000.
3 coats base color, first coat should be really thin
at LEAST three THIN coats of clear, to prevent runs
leave it to dry for a few days after which you can wetsand and polish it to get rid of runs/orange peel

spraying a nice even coat of clear without runs was the hardest part

finished product:



as you can see it is not as shiny as the car. i hope polishing and waxing will take care of that but i should've sprayed more coats of clear.

My Dad works at an accident repair centre and I got the standard black plastic bumpers, side strips, door handles and mirrors all coloured coded in alpine white, looks loads better, well worth doing.

Remember to fold in the mirrors and paint the bit that is normally hidden though because I forgot and now when I fold in the mirrors it's obvious I've had them sprayed and it looks a bit naff!