Painting car door mirrors - 1998 Toyota Starlet EP91R

The latest task in my '98 Starlet Glanza project is to paint the door mirrors. There's no point getting the Glanza mirrors especially when you'd have to find them in the same colour as your car and would be expensive when you can do a nice job painting them yourself.

1. Get your car's colour code. This is located on the VIN plate ( where the vehicle identification number is ) which is located on the firewall in the engine bay. My car is Platinum Metallic aka bluish silver which is Toyota colour code 1A0. To get your colour from the code just search for it: Toyota colour code or similar.

2. Get a spray can custom mixed with this colour. Autobarn does this for ~ $30. You also need a can of undercoat / primer ( ~ $10 Autobarn ) and a can of top coat / clear coat ( ~ $10 Autobarn ).

3. Remove the mirrors from the car:

* remove the triangular shaped interior panel on the inside of the door frame which covers the mirror connection to the door. This is a clip on panel. The way I usually do this is to gently insert a flat head screwdriver where there is room under the cover at the closest end to you ( rear of car end ), move it round a bit til you find the right spot to pry it up, then gently twist the screwdriver to pop up the cover. Gently pull up on the end closest to you and wiggle it out, minding the clips on the other end ( towards front of car ).

* undo the nuts locking the mirror in place and gently remove mirror unit.

4. Clean the mirror unit. You can also take this opportunity to remove the underside panel of the unit and clean out any debris inside it. In my case I had a lot of hidden dirt in behind the actual mirror itself, on the inside of the housing. Give that a thorough clean with high pressure water and dry it out ( hair dryer if it's cold ).

5. The actual mirror cannot be removed from the unit without damage to the rubber seals providing water proofing for the unit and the car, however I still want to paint as close to possible to the entire mirror surround for a smooth, clean look. To this end, I am going to mask just the face and edge trim of the mirror with newspaper and masking tape, essentially wrapping the mirror up, then paint the entire mirror housing, letting paint cover as far as the eye can see on the inner side of the housing down and down behind the actual mirror itself. This way when removed the mirror glass and trim will remain as they were and the inside of the housing should look completely covered.

6. Mask off the rest of the mirror casing ie; the bracket mounting it to the car, we want that black / original colour.

7. Sand back the mirror housing and paint. There's plenty of how tos around for that part.

I'll be posting pics up shortly when the job is done..!