Teardown Tuesday: A Look Back
No, not a look back at the previous posts -- but to a mirror.
Ok. Now of course you're thinking WTF?It's not about this mirror, but rather the improvements that went into the mirror over time.
Another question I'm sure: Why the hell do you have a spare mirror?This mirror sitting on my table was a replacement for the mirror I broke on my trip up to Labrador. I broke the mirror and ordered a new one before I wrecked my bike. It was waiting for me when I landed in Cleveland. Of course that bike never came back to Cleveland.I kept the old mirror as a reminder to myself to be a bit more careful next time.
The thing that's not really clear up front is that they are in fact different. The difference may well have prevented the mirror from breaking in the first place!The old mirror was screwed into the handlebar and contained a split bolt that was held on my another nut.
The process is straight-forward: screw in the base, insert the stalk and adjust as you see fit, then finally tighten down the top nut and you're set.The problem happens if the right mirror gets a goot whack.The lower mounting screw is already torqued in as far as it can go and the stalk it fixed with the top nut. It has nothing to do but break. This is the right mirror that got a whack. It broke.New new design has a set of reverse threaded fasteners:
The lower part, as before, screws into the handlebars. The stalk is now threaded backwards into the lower mount and then when you're happy with the positioning the reverse-threaded nut locks it in place.This way a whack from either side will loosen one or the other bolt!I'd rather deal with loose but fixable with a wrench to broken any day of the week.What you're looking at is the evolution of a single part of a vastly more complicated machine. The part itself remains backward compatible in its use, but it now is better in some subtle way. This is how engineering progresses, lots of minute improvements over the years to get things where we are now.Someone had to see the problem them devise a solution. The constraints of cost, of course, remain. Some random dude (or gal) in Germany called a meeting to go over a design change to some random part. In the end we move forward. The parts in this case are likely easier to machine and make something better. And it's not like the old design was broken, but now it's more awesome!Who would have thought a mirror mount could be so cool?[smugmug url="http://photos.vec.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=19618140_thdMm2&format=rss200" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Th" link="lightbox" captions="false" sort="false" window="true" smugmug="true" size="L"]