Date:         Fri, 5 Jun 2009 16:21:11 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Followup to refurbing sunvisors--the final chapter
Comments: To: diesel-vanagon <Diesel-Vanagon@yahoogroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Up until two months ago or so, the sunvisors in my 83 westy looked and
acted like bags of fine sawdust. They sagged and billowed, filled with
crumbling foam.

I got some spares from my brother so I could experiment in case I
screwed one up.

I did the passenger side by cutting it open with a razor and dumping
out the foam, and replacing it with carefully cut shapes of very thick
cardboard between the steel reinforcing wires inside, then padding
over that with thin craft store foam. Then I glued up the cut seam
with upholstery cement. The result was very good, but it was a lot of
work and I tried an idea my brother had and it turns out that others
have thought about too.

That was to cut a hole in the visor and fill it with great stuff. I
did this to the drivers side, which is a little easier because it
doesn't have a glass mirror to deal with. I worked out a way to
protect the outside of the visor with tape and cut three small holes
to stick the nozzle through. I put in what I thought was the right
amount of foam and sandwiched it between two boards with weights on
top. It only took a few minutes. The results the next morning looked
pretty good, but I noticed that I had not gotten enough foam in one
part and it looked kind of sunken in. So I hit it again and did the
press thing overnight.

Next morning I had to go out of town in it an needed the visor so I
cleaned off the excess foam and mounted the visor. It looked great.
Nice and flat and uniform. Until the next morning, or maybe it was the
morning after. When I looked out in the driveway, I saw that the visor
had swollen to the size of a possum.

I was going out of town for five days at the time (in another car), so
the night before I went, I put the visor between two boards and
cranked the woodworking vise down on the setup. When I returned home,
I took it out and it was OK, but my other visor, done the hard way,
looks a little bit better.

But all in all, they are both much better than what I had.

Jim