My car has been giving me lots of problems lately. I’ll get into it more in another post, but I’m at the stage where I don’t really feel like spending money on car repairs. It feels like throwing good money after bad.
But I have my annual car test coming up, and one of the things they check is mirrors.
Last August, as I was getting off the highway exit ramp, a guy trying to get on the ramp as well side swiped my car, breaking my mirror, and then didn’t pull over to assess the damage. Stupidly I honked at him and followed him off the highway a few blocks, honking at him repeatedly, but he didn’t stop. Eventually I called the police who said they’d look for him (I got his license plate number) who told me off for doing that, since I could have been in danger if I chase after a car like that.
But either way, the police never got back to me, and I never got the drivers’ information, so I never got him to pay for my mirror repair.
And because of this, the thought of spending money to fix it was just really annoying and frustrating, because it wasn’t even my fault.
At first, there were just some large cracks on the mirror, but I could still see through it, even if it was annoying, and each time I saw that crack it irked me because this damage to the car wasn’t even my fault. (All other damage pretty much is my fault because I am not a great driver.)
Then as the months passed, the glass in the mirror started discoloring, becoming a more brownish purple color in a large part of it, which still showed a reflection but was harder to see through, especially at night. But there still was part of the mirror that was uncracked and with its original color, and I could still see headlights through the darkened part of the mirror.
I ordered a mirror from Amazon that was meant to be for my type of car, a 2008 Chrysler Town and Country, for $20, including international shipping. But when it arrived, it obviously was the wrong mirror for my car, since it was too large for mine.
My son, once he was able to start driving my car after he got his drivers license in January asked me to please replace the mirror because it was hard for him to see through it when driving, so I agreed to do it.
But the place that I knew of that dealt with glass for cars, including windows and mirrors, closed at noon every day, and I’m not a morning person, and when I do manage to leave the house in the morning, it usually is for appointments so I’m busy until 12 or so.
I was actually on the way to get it taken care of when my car broke down last time. But then the mirror got even worse.
It started having more cracks spider web across even more of the surface, leaving just the upper right corner of the mirror usable.
So this morning, I had a doctor’s appointment in the city at 9:30, so once that was finished I figured it was the perfect time to take care of the mirror. My mechanic told me that I might be able to get them to cut the too large mirror I bought from Amazon to install it on my car.
When I found the place, the manager there took one look at my car and said “I didn’t think anyone in this country drives this anymore. I don’t think I have mirrors for it.”
I told him that I had the mirror I bought from Amazon but didn’t work for my car, and if he wanted to cut that, he could. He said he wasn’t going to do that.
He ended up taking another mirror that he had and cutting it to side, and attached it on top of my broken mirror, so that it would still work with the automatic mirror adjustment mechanism of my car.
When he finished and I went to pay, he said I owed him nothing, as long as I give him the mirror from Amazon. Of course, I had no need for it anymore, so why not?
In 24 hours, I take off the tape and styrofoam holding it in place, and I’ll have a fully working mirror again.
After all the dough I’ve had to pour into this money pit of a car lately, it was nice to get a repair that basically was free, simply in exchange for something I bought and was sitting around and I didn’t need anymore.
It was exciting enough that I needed to share this with you.
And I can’t wait to have a full field of view driving with my car from now on.
Have you had to replace a mirror on your car? How much did you have to pay for it? How much would you have assumed it would cost? I literally had zero idea and was so glad that the number here was zero dollars.
