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Reply With QuoteYes, doofus, that's done by polarisationOriginally Posted by Khumpty
No, it's not polarized. He means the Day/Night lever. Polarized means it blocks light waves aligned along a certain axis to reduce glare.
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Originally Posted by Saab9-5
you won't have the option to flip the mirror up. And for anyone, what is the proper name of the function I'm talking about?
It's polarised.
Yes, doofus, that's done by polarisation
No, it's not. It's done by splitting incident light into a small fraction that is reflected from the front surface of the mirror and a larger fraction that is reflected from the rear surface in a slightly different direction. This reduces the overall intensity of the light that reaches your eyes.
I'm not being an ***, but so far you've made the following comments which have both been incorrect and ill informed:
andHow is a one way mirror going to help you?
Think about it!
Yes, doofus, that's done by polarisation
Maybe you should be a little more careful where you throw around the doofus word.
Thanks for the supplier info! I can see you are a local!
I intend to duplicate the mirror's physical characteristics. It's a wedge shape. From How Stuff Works.com:
"If you stand in front of a normal window in your house at night (inside the house, with the indoor lights ON), you will be able to see your reflection in the glass quite clearly. A car's mirror takes advantage of the same effect.
The mirror is not ground flat -- the front glass surface is at an angle to the back (mirrored) surface. So if you looked at this mirror out of its casing, it would be wedge-shaped with the thicker edge at the top. When you "flip" the mirror, the back mirrored surface actually points toward the dark ceiling, so you don't see that image. What you see instead is the image reflecting off the front of the glass, and this is much dimmer that the pure reflected image so it does not hurt your eyes."
But I'm also intrigued with the suggestion that I had remove some of the etching to emulate a one way mirror effect. The Audi mirror is exactly what I want - appearance of a stock mirror but with the hidden display underneath.
I'm thinking I'll get some "practice" mirrors from the hardware store and try various grades of ultra fine sandpaper on them to see if I can uniformly remove some, but not all of the silvering.
Thanks for the tips so far, guys.
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I was also thinking about doing this.. I have a 2x16 (maybe 2x20) VFD ready to stash in there.. I was originally thinking about putting a small 1.6" LCD that I have lying around but it's too thick.
The VFD is pretty thick also, so I will have to cut a hole in the back of the mirror housing and then fiberglass over the VFD (there will be a little hump on the back of the rearview mirror housing)..
As for one-way (also called two-way) mirrors, I was thinking about using mirrored Plexiglas which comes in a two-way variety. If there are multiple people interested, we could get a large sheet and cut it amongst ourselves.
I was also going to try getting Plexiglas locally and try some mirror car tint I have lying around as I've heard this works also, only problem being I'm not sure how well the mirrored surface will be (I'd still like to be able to see behind me clearly)..
Anyway, I'll let you guys know once I start on this..
jason
Yep. 15 years in Springfield - just a stone's throw from you. Now I'm on the other side of the world for another year and a half.
I've got one more supplier for you that will be better than the hardware store. Its a bit of a drive from your area but Brandywine has a foreign car yard in Upper Marlboro that has VWs, Audis, and Porches. They also are the only reasonably priced yard that has Saabs which is how I know them. You could get a couple of real VW mirrors to practice on. Non-electronic mirrors are usually $5.
The address is:
2810 Brown Station RoadThe last time I was there, about 7 months ago, they had 3 VW New Beetles so you may be able to get the exact mirror you have to test/practice on.
Upper Marlboro, MD 20772
301-627-4265
http://www.brandywineparts.com/foreignparts.htm
Cool. I know where they are, just a short distance from my father-in-law's house. I may make a trip over there next time we visit!
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Use a razor to remove the silvering. I did it to a mirror on my bed headboard to put an alarm clock behind it.
Use a fairly heavy object with a flat surface on top of the sandpaper and let gravity do the work, kinda like lapping a heatsink..
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