I’ve always had a minor gripe about the
rear-view mirror in the spider.It is
too small.All other Alfas I’ve owned
have had decent sized mirrors, essential in an Alfa obviously, to see the
sullied masses trailing in one’s wake
So I decided to fit a spare one I had
stashed away from a 75.You can see the
difference in size below.And this isn’t
really accurate either as the spider one is closer to the camera and is
actually smaller than it appears here.
The only complication was that the mounting
for the 75’s mirror was totally different to the original Spider one.So I needed to remove the mounting arm from
the original and attach it to the 75’s actual mirror housing.Removing the 75’s mirror housing from its
mounting arm is straight-forward as the metal ball on the back of the arm sits
in a plastic socket.This means that it
can be popped out with relative ease.
The Spider’s though, is rather more
involved as the socket is metal and won’t give up without a fight.
You need to pop open the mirror
assembly.This is easy as it is plastic
and snaps together held by four tabs: two top, two bottom. Then remove the
glass and then the mirror.This exposes
the socket assembly.This is a
metal-plastic-metal sandwich held together by two rivets.
Pop the whole socket assembly out of the
mirror casing and drill out the two rivets.Take the socket apart and you’re still left with the arm held captive by
the back of the socket.I just cut a
slit in this with a ‘Dremel’ type tool to release the arm. [The ball you see here is from the 75. It simply screws to the mounting arm which would make this job far simpler. The Spider's, however, is a press/riveted setup.]
Once you have the arm (complete with ball)
free, you can simply pop it into the socket on the 75’s mirror casing.Much
better.
