Video Transcript for An In-Depth Look at the CIPA Universal Fit Towing Mirror

Randy: Hey guys, it's Randy here at etrailer.com. A common problem and the problem customers always ask us for a solution for when hauling a trailer, is when you have to lean way up to look in your mirror and see what your trailer's doing. Basic solution for that's going to be either a universal or custom type towing mirror. What we're going to look at today is a universal towing mirror, it's designed to fit many different vehicles and applications.Basically what we're looking for is a mirror that's going to be seven to 10 inches tall, so it's going to be the larger GM mirrors like this, or a lot of the vans that are coming out now have the larger kind of more rectangular mirrors. This is going to give us a second full size mirror. We're looking at four inches by seven inches.

Gives us a great view of what's going on behind us.By adding this on, basically when it's time to back into our spot, when it's time to get around the parking lots and stuff, we can remain seated in our comfortable position. We can look side to side, see exactly where and what our trailer's doing. We're not going to have to be way up here where it's uncomfortable. Generally if you're holding onto the steering wheel trying to lean up like this, you don't have the control that you really want, so this allows us just to do our maneuvering, see exactly what's going on with our trailer and really not have to worry about it.If you just need one for the driver or for the passenger side, if that's a difficult area for you, you can pick them up singally, but they're also available in a pair so you can have one on each side. This universal mirror is going to be best suited for the occasional towing situation where if there just isn't a custom option available for your vehicle.

On this GM, we could easily use one of the custom mirrors and I feel like those are going to give you a slightly better performance.They seem not to vibrate as much. They seem to be easier to install, especially the Snap and Zap, those clip right on. But in those situations where we don't have a custom option available, these are really going to help you out. Now, the overall construction feels nice and durable. Of course, it's going to be a polymer material, so rust and corrosion really isn't something we're going to worry about, but I also don't think these are going to be something you're going to leave on your vehicle forever.They don't really have that, that custom or that factory look to them, so it definitely kind of stands out.

People are going to notice you're using a set of towing mirrors. As we drive, this is going to catch a little bit of wind, so we're going to get it going through our parking lot here and get some footage of that and also out on the highway so you know exactly what to expect from it.And you can see, definitely getting a little bit of vibration out of the mirror, and we're going pretty slow right now, only about 25 miles an hour. It's on a pretty bumpy road. In just a minute we're going to get out on the concrete road. We'll get up to about 60 and we'll take a look at it there and see how it does.

I would imagine though it was going to be pretty consistent, with just a little bit of vibration.The mirror face is fully adjustable, so we can tilt this towards the vehicle, top or bottom. We can bring it in and out so it has all the adjustability that we expect from our factory mirror. And it also pivots, so we can rotate that more into an up and down if we want to have a situation to where we're looking more at the top corner of our camper so we can see the entire side of an enclosed trailer.This gives you that adjustability so you can use it either up and down, or in the horizontal configuration. Now, the way it attaches, there are going to be the tabs and they're going to have a little catch that goes in and grabs onto the lip of that mirror. And in most instances, as long as you've got a little bit of space there, it's really not gonna affect the adjustability that you get out of your factory mirror.Now your installation process, that's really going to depend on the mirror type you're going to be using. You can see we have an adjustment right here, this is going to allow us to bring our arms farther apart or closer together. And that's pretty unique on a universal towing mirror like this. We don't always see that, so with that loosened up, you can see we've got the ability to extend that out and those teeth are gonna engage, keep everything locked in nice and tight.Our mirror is on the smaller side, we're right at seven inches, so we're going to keep ours all the way closed there. And then to add to that universal application, we've got our adjustable arms. Now with the mirror you can see, the bottom side's a little shorter than the top, so position the bottom where I want it right there, and then I can just adjust that top out.It's like that's going to be about the right fit for us. Now I like to have one strap pretty loose, I'm going to use that just to hold my mirror up here in place. I'll adjust the tension on the other one and that's simply going to be by pulling that strap through our clip there, just like that. You can get it adjusted where you want it, and they do a really good job of holding in place when you get them properly adjusted.Tighten this one up just a little bit more, and we can always tighten them up a little bit more if need be. If you ever notice you get out on the highway and get up to speed and you don't like exactly the angle it's at, you can always adjust it a little bit there. All right. And then you can see once they get the adjusted properly there, be nice and secure for us, should we be in good shape.If you just got the one, you'll have it on the driver's side, maybe, potentially on the passenger side, wherever it's going to benefit you the most. But if you're going to be using these, it's not a bad idea to go ahead and get both of them, that way you can have one on each side, just save you a lot of headache when it comes to making those turns of maneuver.