Video Transcript for What to Know About the CIPA Rearview Boat Mirror

Zack: Hey, everybody. Zack here at etrailer.com. Today, we're going to be taking a look at a rear view boat mirror from CIPA. This is going to be a really good way to not have to do this thing where we're turning around this way to look at who we're towing and then also go back and forth. So, not the safest way to be out boating. This is going to give us pretty good visibility behind our boat, but also going to allow us to see forward.

It's not going to really obstruct our view. I have mine a little bit more central right here on my windshield, but I still can see out ahead of everything. As we bring it over here to the side, I had some issues with it mounting properly, but that's just because it's kind of angled there. You can put this anywhere on your windshield frame.That's the nice thing about this style. You're not stuck to just a suction cup mount style where you have to put it at a weird angle on your glass.

We can put it up on the frame, get it up out of the way, give us that visibility that we're looking for. Now, this isn't the biggest one that we offer, but I kind of like the smaller ones. It gives me what I'm looking for on seeing behind me, but it's not going to be really obnoxious and obstruct my view up front either. So it's constructed of a ABS plastic all the way through. So some of them will have a plastic housing around the mirror and then a metal bracket.

I was a little, I guess, questionable on how well this was going to hold up, but it has a really good hold there. You can see it moves just a little bit, but it's holding in place pretty good.I think you'd have some minor vibrations through there, but this one is a little bit more sturdy compared to some of the others I've tested out. I think that right there in that ball and socket, where we can make those adjustments, is where we're seeing some vibrations, but overall getting that visibility is the most important thing. And it's going to be an issue with most boat mirrors, is that movement, because you have that ball and socket design. Now, when it comes to the actual size of the mirror, it's three and three-quarters by seven and 11/16ths.

So that's going to still give us a good size, even though it's not the biggest out there, but that convex lens is really what gives us that wide angle view that we're looking for.To get this mounted up, we need to determine where we want to place this. So I'm going to set mine right about here, so it's not in the way when I'm driving. And I have a frame here that's three-quarters inch thick. So I'm going to use the thinner of the mounts. Now this has a double-sided adhesive to it. I'm not going to peel that off for demonstration purposes today, but if you have a thinner frame, you'll use the thicker piece here to hold that in place. I'm going to just set that aside. It's not needed today. So what we would do is we can mount this however you'd like. I'm going to put mine like this today. And then we'll just begin turning those knobs until we get a nice snug fit. Get this put in place. You can see how that gets a nice fit and pulls itself in.Now this works with frame sizes up to three-quarters of an inch like we have here. I think you could maybe go a little bit more than that, but this is kind of a standard frame on this windshield. And then once we get that there, we can test it out. You can see I'm a little bit loose still, so I'm going to make that adjustment and get this a little bit tighter. Make sure we get a nice snug fit. There we go. And we can make any adjustments necessary. Now I need to bring this a little bit closer. So we'll get the Phillips screwdriver right here and we'll loosen this up. Then I'll tell you in this one down. Now we can make those adjustments necessary.So now you can see I've got a good view behind me, but I'm not obstructing anything in front, so I don't have to do the turnaround thing. But I think this is one of those things that it's really important to have on there, especially if you're putting people on the water. Even if you're not going to have people back there, I think it's still a good idea to be able to see all around you whenever you're out on the water. But that's going to do it for our look at the CIPA rear view boat mirror.