Completion of the mirror story

I posted a couple of days ago about the repair Carl had started on the driver's side mirror on Gracie (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2023/11/working-on-mirror-repair.html)...

On Friday...

Carl started on his mirror work by replacing the small convex mirror on the Jeep's passenger side mirror -- the adhesive had given up so he replaced it with new adhesive.

He had gone to the Ace Hardware on Thursday to get stainless steel bolts and locking nuts -- unfortunately, they did not have either, but he got bolts, washers, and nuts, and planned to put locking material on to lock the nuts.

Note -- I took the picture on top of the lid of one of our "red boxes" which contain a lot of Carl's supplies for doing tasks around our home. We have 6 of these boxes and each has a numbered label on the box and the lid, as well as an inventory sheet inside a zip-lock bag which is taped inside under the translucent top. Carl does a great job of putting items back into the box from which he took them which helps our inventory system (spreadsheet) stay up-to-date. Dwayne and I had gotten the original red boxes (3 of them) in 2018 when we were organizing our space in Miss Doozie. We found that these boxes fit Gracie's pull-out tray almost perfectly, and ordered 3 more in 2020 to make the best use of our available space. I'm not a salesperson for Uline, but in case you'd be interested in something similar, here are links: box: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-19496R/Plastic-Bins/Divider-Box-20-x-15-x-6-Red, lid: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-16978LID/Plastic-Bins/Divider-Box-Lid-20-x-15 - the boxes are heavy duty and can hold heavy stuff, but aren't so large that they are too unwieldy to manage once they are loaded.

Inside the front cap after the foam insulation was scraped away. On the right side are the two screws which were still holding the mirror base onto Gracie; on the left side you can see the two bolts sticking through that we now need to put washers and nuts onto...

Outside view of the two bolt heads.

Note that putting the washers and nuts on was not a simple as might have been wished -- that area of the body is quite a distance from the opening from which we could access it. Carl found that he could not both see what he was doing and reach the area, so he had to just reach into the hole and find the bolts with his fingers. I held the bolts on the outside until he got the washers on, and then used a drill driver to screw them in. For the final tightening, he put a crescent wrench on each nut while I continued tightening. (My brother, Jimmy, says that he often has a choice of either seeing what he needs to do, or doing it... we would have appreciated having his long arms while working on this project!)

Finished with the attachment of the base, now it was time to re-attach the mirror assembly. Carl is putting the chrome cover over the base... no pictures of putting the mirror on as it took both of us to hold it in place and tighten it up.

Inside the front fiberglass cap of Gracie - bolts with washers and nuts in place.

Mirror in place!

Whew! I'm glad we were able to get that job done ourselves and to get it done before we start our long drive to Arizona next week. It took quite a bit of figuring it out as we went along (maybe folks at a service center would have known exactly what to do and have been able to do it more quickly) -- but we figured we saved a few hundred dollars versus paying $195/hour at the service center!