7 years bad luck? or Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!

Replacing only the glass can be difficult because the replacement glass might not fit into the housing due to a slight difference in size or due to small shards of glass that you will not be able to reach and remove from the housing. That's the problem I had when I tried replacing only the glass on one of my rides.

In your situation, I would try searching for a mirror assembly from a salvage vehicle. Finding one for your Prius might be challenging since your car's color is somewhat rare.

BTW, I've never used blind spot mirrors. I move the side mirrors outward as much as possible - this has worked well.

 

time to mod folding mirrors with turn signals. make some lemonade!

 

I had a driver in an opposing lane remove the mirror from my usta-truck one day.

To his credit....he was sober, he didn't appear to be texting at the time, and he stopped immediately to offer to pay for the mirror.
Pleased by his honesty, and not wanting my VIN to appear in an accident report (and in CARFAX) I took his offer of $200 to just drive away and DIY the repair.

Like TEM's Prius, the shell was intact and I just needed the glass mirror.
After scrabbling around the internet for 2-3 days and not being able to find one.......I threw myself on the tender mercies of GM and visited the local dealer's parts counter.

Bad News: No mirror replacement. No way. No Day. You have to order the whole assembly.

Good News: No seven years bad luck for me. The mirror assembly was less than $110, and it took less than 15 minutes ti replace it.

Take-Away: Sometimes the dealer is cheaper than you think. In my case, they were actually cheaper that the internet parts vendors!

Unfortunately, Priuses have body colored mirrors, so it might be more expensive for you than my truck mirror story, but you never know.
As many blind spot as these cars have, I'm sure that you will not be the first person to ask for replacement glass.


Good Luck!

 

I like the way Toyota does mirrors.

The mirror structure/mechanical guts are one part. The body-colored shell is a separate cheap part and can be ordered in all the available colors. (My mom had a Hyundai where you could only buy the mirror in primer gray and pay a body shop to paint-match it, for way more than what the part cost.)

And the Toyota glass is its own separate part, premounted in a plastic carrier that just snaps into place. You'll be done in 5 minutes. (I admit, figuring out how to snap the carrier out the first time you've ever done it is a little worrisome when you don't yet know how to do it without cracking the glass ... but you won't be worried about that.)

The part seems to be about $40, or $70 in the auto-dimming flavor, but you should get the right part numbers from your dealer because the online catalog I was looking in hasn't got 2013s yet.

-Chap

 

2013 Toyota Prius FRONT DOOR Outside mirrors Mirror glass Mossy Toyota

 

You could try an aftermarket stick-on mirror. It won't be exactly the right size, but it will do the job.

 

I'm also troubled by the blind-spots in my Prius. I cancelled my order for the 2 rubberized "eyeball" cameras that I was originally planning to mount on the car to give me a rear-view on my head unit display.

Based on my experience with the backup camera; the lens is always getting obscured by road debris, so I'm looking into the possibility of mounting a wide-angle dash-cam in my rear window. This way, a clear view is just a windshield-wiper-washer swipe away.

I'm not sure if I want to feed the signal to my head unit, in which case I'd have to also purchase the speed over-ride module; or whether I should buy the new Garmin GPS nav with a backup camera option. I could turn it on by supplying power to the camera with a switch.

I'd like to hear from someone who has explored this option.

 

I may go for the cheap wired camera option. The only foreseeable problem will be finding a reasonable place to put the video display.

 

Ah, but then you lose the best chance you'll ever have to learn how they snap in ... by snapping one out that you don't care about cracking, since it's already cracked!

-Chap

 

It doesn't hurt to have a Garmin nav in the car anyway, because the OEM nav is just junk, which I find barely usable. I was happy with the third-party wireless back-up cam I had in my Corolla, because it projected the image from the rear-view mirror, thereby taking up no extra space. The only drawback is that it obviates the self-tinting OEM mirror, but come to think about it, it doesn't work very well anyway.

 

I don't know if this will be of any value to you. I have a 2014 Avalon Hybrid XLE Touring. One of the outside mirrors had a defect in the mirror part. It was under warranty and Toyota replaced the mirror part. It only took a few minutes for them to do it. You might consider asking a Toyota dealer how much they will charge you for them to replace it.

 

I never had a problem seeing it, mind you the mirror was a bit closer to the eye in the Corolla than it is in the Prius.

 

I think it would be wise to do a lot of research to make sure you will be satisfied with your choice of an aftermarket back-up camera. For example I think you would want one that has infrared night vision so you can see well at night behind you. No question that a back-up camera is a valuable safety device.

 

Research is king, I agree. I don't intend using mine for backing up, as I already have a backup camera, which doesn't need infrared as it happens, because the reversing lights do just fine illuminating the way at night.

Mine is planned to be inside the back window, where it can have an unobscured view of the blind-spots on the road while I'm driving. At any rate, IR illumination doesn't work from behind glass at night, because it only reflects back, obscuring the image. Most of the newer cameras do a nice job at night with the latest CMOS sensors.