The present invention generally relates to a mirror mount for vehicles and more particularly to a mount attachable to the body of a vehicle and adapted to securely hold the pole or staff of an automotive mirror.
Motor vehicles, and in particular larger vehicles such as buses, trucks and the like, require an array of mirrors mounted on exterior surfaces of such vehicles in order to improve the visibility and field of view of the driver in and around the vehicle. Typically, an automotive mirror element has attached to it a staff or pole and that pole is secured within a mount which is in turn attached to the body of the vehicle.
The present invention concerns itself with the mount per se and specifically with a mount of the type which can be attached to the body of the vehicle, for example to the fenders, and also, if desired, to the back of the mirror element to serve the mirror staff therein.
Mirror mounts for vehicles have been described in several issued patents including in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,969,715, 3,592,532 and 4,165,156. However, the present invention could be characterized as an improvement of the mirror mount that is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,063. The 4,500,063 patent illustrates and describes a front-wheel fender mount for securing the pole of a mirror which mount includes a base member with an inner surface designed to be secured to the curved front portion of the fender and an opposite outer surface. A cover member is in turn secured to the outer surface of the base member, the cover member and the base member having portions which define a cavity therebetween for securing the lower end, i.e. the pole of the mirror therein.
More specifically, the cover member has a plurality of transverse ribs which extend perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis of the cover member. These ribs form bearing surfaces which are intended to frictionally bear and press against the mirror pole. In the base member, the 4,500,063 patent provides regions where the body of the base member is reinforced to provide strength at the location of apertures in which self-tapping screws are screwed in order to tightly secure the cover and base members to one another.
Generally, the mirror mount of the 4,500,063 patent requires molding of a pair of intricately shaped plastic parts, and require for their implementation more plastic material and comparatively more expensive molds.
Further, the need to tightly secure the two plastic parts to one another presents a reliability problem involving plastic creep. In this connection, it is noted that mirrors on vehicles typically project outside the main vehicle body and are most likely to collide with other objects and most prone to be damaged accidentally or, in the case of school buses, sometimes intentionally due to the playfulness of youngsters.
Also, the need to define a precisely shaped bore between the cover and base members in the device of the 4,500,063 patent requires more precisely formed and more frequently replaced molds, resulting in greater cost for molds and more expensive mirror mounts. A two-piece plastic mirror mount design is also less sturdy and the fact that a cover piece is fitted to a base piece presents an aesthetically less-pleasing appearance.