DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Hi all

Hoping someone can kindly help. I’ve read around as much as I could and a bit stuck now.

I believe a rhd (‘72) would have come with just a small flag mirror on the drivers side and an optional small flag on the passengers side, although the position of the passengers would have sat in a slightly different position on the door to the drivers side, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to see anything with it at all. Firstly, is that all correct?

I’ve decided I am going to go for the factory look flag mirrors and leaning towards just the drivers one as the CoA doesn’t suggest it was optioned with a passenger one, and I want it to be original spec. As such, I’m looking for a rhd drivers flag mirror. Does anyone have any suggestion on the best quality one to buy, and from where?

Thanks for reading.

Hi,

I thought flag mirrors came in, in 73 but only for LHD cars. RHD cars continued with the round durant mirror.

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Yes, a '72 RHD car would have been fitted with a round Durant mirror.

As far as I'm aware all new 'Durant' mirrors are (inferior) repros so you will be better off looking for a good/used original.

They weren't 'handed' which means that the same mirror could be fitted to either side - so a mirror originally from a LHD car could be used on the rhs.

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To help you get an original Durant mirror,


Original mirror markings




Reproduction mirror markings



Regards
Mike

Thanks everyone. Shame as I prefer the flag shape.

I can see some originals of these for sale on eBay.

Would anyone know if the same applies, in terms of from factory on rhd, would it have only come with one and not a pair?

Typically only one from the factory.

Regards
Mike

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Even in the rare situation that a passenger side mirror was optioned it was a complete waste of time ...

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Typically only one from the factory. Most agree that a passenger mirror is pretty useless unless it’s fitted in a totally different position to the driver mirror.

Regards
Mike

...although, with Durants, my favourite scheme these days is to fit two (originals) but replace the flat glass in the passenger one with convex. At which point it becomes moderately useful, and I think looks better than just one mirror, although that's obviously personal opinion.

Agree placement needs to be different on the passenger side - I stumbled upon something that works by re-using the holes that were already there for the passenger side position (for a different type of mirror) on my ex race car - those holes were presumably drilled for functional reasons...

Here's a pic (RHD car - driver side in usual position, passenger side further back as you can see)

Thank you everyone for the very helpful replies.

My car had both positions drilled for racing (see attached). I had some temporary cheap mirrors dropped in whilst I decided what to go with. Think I’ll buy 2 gen Durants and put them in. When the car goes in for full metalwork which it needs, I will probably revert to 1.

@inaglasshouse: would love to know where you get your mirror glass from? And are they easy to pop out the original glass and replace?

Thanks again everyone for the help.

Silver911SC wrote: @inaglasshouse: would love to know where you get your mirror glass from? And are they easy to pop out the original glass and replace?

I bought mine in the US, from an RV parts place. But doubtless available here, they are nothing special, some kind of standard size (in inches).

I have never managed to remove the original glass without breaking it. But I am an idiot, so it's probably do-able. Once broken it comes out rather easily . In fact if you resign yourself to sacrificing the glass, breaking it is the best scheme, because it means you can get some force behind the retaining ring without risking damaging it or the mirror casing.
For the above idiocy reason, since it seems rude to break decent glass, I have only cannibalised Durants where the glass is already too far gone and/or the bolt / adjuster that holds the base to the movable bit has rusted away, so the movable part has fallen off or gone floppy (no friction in the adjuster). If that happens the glass needs to come out anyway, to get access and replace the bolt.
Yep, easy to pop back in!

I think I have now made all the mirrors I could possibly need for my own use, and still have 4 or 5 original Durant shells left over (and a few new convex glasses). One day I will make up some more and sell them, but not today. My central heating system has just thrown an error code and shut down the boiler, so need to fix that first...

Haha. Thanks for the reply. I might just get two decent ones as there are some on eBay by the looks of it.

Most boiler codes are simply the refill loop needs topping up (a 10second job), or someone shut the gas inlet off; although only a result of someone recently working on the system. Or the computer might have gone and some models are plug and play swap outs. Good luck

Thanks!
Good guess with the refill loop, was indeed water pressure. But in this case the pressure equalising thing (not sure of the name, looks like a giant Citroen hydropneumatic sphere) seems to have lost pressure on the air side and / or failed internally. Have pumped it up for now and we are back in business, but we shall see. Might be time for a precautionary replacement anyway.

Pressure accumulator.
Just like the one in a CIS fuel injection system

Water isn’t compressible so the air bag deals with the pressure fluctuations when the system heats & cools. Some are mounted inside the boiler and can suffer from the heat cycling close to the burner. The rubber diaphragm can perish & then it fills with water & becomes “solid”. Without the air bag, the pressure shoots up when the water comes to temp. The emergency relief valve then kicks in releasing a bit of water to drop the pressure. When the system cools, the pressure falls below the minimum & the safety sensor stops the boiler firing up again!!

You can add a remote accumulator if the original is internal to the boiler & regularly fails.

Since you brought it up

I just replaced the pressure vessel on my heating, tool station had them in stock at a good price