Clearview mirrors for the 70 Series

After a good experience with the OTA D-MAX Clearview installation and test results, we decided to upgrade our trusty LandCruiser 75 Series’ – ‘Harry’s’ – mirrors. 

Harry’s original 70 mirrors had been replaced by truck-style mirrors before we bought the ute and they were looking decidedly dodgy after many years of shaking around on corrugated roads and scraping along narrow bush tracks. Time for an update.

We were pleased to discover that the Clearview range for the current LandCruiser 70 Series would fit our 1993 75 Series without any modifications being necessary. That’s because the current door skins are identical to the originals that date back to 1984.

We opted for the second iteration of the original two-width design, rather than the Next Gen models we’ve tested before.

The only compromise is loss of the quarter pane opening function, because the Clearview mounting plate blocks its movement. However, since the introduction of air conditioning, most owners don’t open their quarter panes and most new 70 Series variants don’t even have them.

Replacing the awful, cheap standard 70 Series mirrors is easy, because the Clearview mirror mounts match the standard Toyota holes and nut inserts. The pattern has varied slightly over the long life of the 70 Series door skins, so the Clearview mounting holes are ‘lozenged’, to cope with these slight variations.

However, on ‘Harry’, the retro-fitted truck mirror brackets had been installed via new holes drilled into the upper door frames and via reinforcing plates on the door skins. The original Toyota attachment holes had been filled with bog and over-painted.

We took off the old mirror brackets and the interior door cards, because we knew we’d need to put lock nuts inside the door skins, on the Clearview bracket screws. The Clearview kit screws rely on using Toyota’s ‘nutsert’ captive nuts that are visible in the door skins, once the factory mirror brackets are removed. 

Putting Clearviews on a 70 Series that has the standard motor brackets is a doddle and doesn’t require taking off the interior door cards. In our case, we had to find the original Toyota bracket holes under the paint and bog and use interior nuts on the ends of the screws.

We reckon that putting a pair of non-powered replacement Clearviews on a standard-mirror 70 Series would be an hour-long job. However, in our case, we had to probe around inside the door skins, finding the filled-up original holes and then drilling them out. The whole operation took two hours.

It would be more fiddly if the Clearview choice was the powered option, because there’s wiring to be fed through the skins, but for us, the simpler things are, the less likely they are to go wrong, so we didn’t consider the powered option. If we’re ever too old to wind down side windows, to adjust the mirror positions, it’ll be time to give up bush travel!

Driving and towing with the Clearviews has been good, with ample rear view provided by the main flat mirrors and convex spotters. They have minimal shake, until the roads become severely corrugated.

Our only issue is that the spotters have ‘click’ adjustment that isn’t quite fine enough between the indents: a more gradual adjustment design would be better.