Carbon Fiber mirror covers

BMW i3 Forum

Help Support BMW i3 Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Shrink13

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Messages
47
Location
Palo Alto, CA
Does any have any experience with how the the carbon fiber mirror covers look and fit on the i3? I am looking at the carbon fiber mirror covers on eBay that are double face taped onto the original mirror covers.

Thanks for any comments.
 
EDIT: Sorry, I miss-read your post, I thought you were looking at replacement caps, not vinyl overlay's.
 
After giving it a bit of thought, it really shouldn't be too bad. If your not sure about doing it yourself then check out some local tint shops, a lot of them do wraps now and should be able to do the work for you if you are concerned about DIY'ing. Let us know if you do it and how it turns out!
 
Thanks again for your thoughts. My concern was about how an extra layer of material would look on the mirror housing and whether it would be noticeable at the edges. I have the sense that once the covers are mounted with double face tape that they are there to stay.
I am still thinking about the project and thanks for your support.
 
Anyone has instruction on how to remove the original black side mirror cover?

I want to replace mine with the carbon fiber ones and the only instructions i found was to pull the original ones with your hands which seems wrong to me.

Thanks
 
Google search "f30 mirror cover removal," they have the same mirrors. When I tinted my mirror signals, I disassembled the mirrors. But if you happen to come across someone saying to just pull on them, no; you have to remove the glass first and un-clip the covers from behind the glass.
 
I'm the most an_l person there is when it comes to my cars and doing things correctly, I have big grippy hands and pulled out and down on the factory covers and they came right off. The carbon fibers I bought are flawless, absolutely beautiful. Less than 2 minutes to snap off factory and snap in carbons.
 
You got lucky or you didn't realize you broke the tabs on your original covers.

I read the same "just pull hard" when I was working on my e46. Broke every tab on both of them before I realized what had happened. Popping out the glass only takes an extra minute or so per side.
 
It was not luck whatsoever, and no the tabs were not broke or stressed in the least. A friend of mine owns a body shop for 37 years and only works on BMW, Porsche, Audi and he attends continuing education factory seminars for every new update and model change.
I've spent what equals to months at his shop over the years and he said there is more chance of damage popping off glass with breakage or mirror clip breakage as depressing the clips in the cover once exposed does not fully release the cover anyway so best to do it without touching glass mirrors. This was nowhere near my first mod and I never take chances.
I paid my way through college 40 years ago by installing custom stereo installations, so my knowledge and experience goes way back. If you ever tore apart a vehicle inside and out, there are many many panels that snap off that are made exactly the same way as the mirrors, some you use plastic pry tools to get it started some just your fingers, there is no difference. There are many videos on you tube showing my way, some good some not so good.
 
I am still not going to recommend that method, we will have to agree to disagree. I got lucky on the e46 and found some contrasting caps that actually looked good with Imola Red.

I popped the mirrors out on my leased REx twice per mirror, never had a problem with cracking the glass. I have also popped them out once now on our CPO BEV without any issues.

Best of luck, the result looks great regardless of the method.
 
Back
Top