Sagging sun visors

[Sycamore]

So here goes a really lame first post (hi all, BTW!): can't keep the visors from flopping down to save my life. Even swapped them out and the 'new' ones keep doing it. Must be in the dowel/hardware somewhere. So....anyone have any clever solutions here that don't involve what/where I seem to be heading mentally -- taking them out altogether?

Car is a 1972 1608cc....

Thanks!

[RRoller123]

Common problem, the small screws up top, left and right I think, tighten them up. But they wear over time. The friction drops and they don't hold up against the gravitational laws of nature. I haven't tried this, but maybe a small piece of thin rubber strip tucked in would allow them to tighten again, or the application of some of that liquid electrical tape underneath the screw, where it presses against the rod would work?

[18Fiatsandcounting]

A good question, and very timely as I just yesterday took apart a spare sun visor that I had laying around. The seam on one end had opened up, and when I tilted it up, a large pile of green power fell out onto the floor. Apparently, this is what's left of the polymer foam after it "depolymerizes"...

Anyway, a couple thoughts:

1. I removed my visors because I am tall enough so that if I try to use them, they pretty much block most of my view out the windshield. If I leave them up all the time, there's no point in having them. There is some advantage to having them when the top is down, as you can flip the visors above the windshield frame, but (at high enough speeds) the wind blows them back down. So I just took them off.

2. I disassembled the sun visor I mentioned above, and there is an internal metal frame for the foam with 2 double-walled brackets welded where the hinges are. I think what is supposed to happen is that the small bolts and nuts on either end compress that small metal "clamp" which goes around the outside of the visor, and that in turn compresses the bracket so that it is tighter around the hinge rod.

The solution is to get those screws tighter, however, the screws and nuts are more decorative than functional. But, if you remove them, you can put another bolt and nut in their place and tighten that to see if it solves your problem. Or use some vise-grips as a test. You can either live with those new screws/nuts, or see if you can get the original screws to provide more clamping force. By the way, the original nuts are hard to keep from turning because the tip of the screw points out right where your screwdriver would go, but I cut a notch in an old screwdriver with a Dremel tool to get around that.

-Bryan

[Zoofly]

I had that problem. Tried a few different things that didn't work, including stuffing rubber and foam in the holes. Finally, I removed the visors and with a pliers, squeezed the holes (nearest the rear view mirror) tighter. At first I over did it, but now they're tight and hold in any position I put them in.

[daved]

I had the same problem. After constantly tightening the screw finally enlarged the screw hole some and put in a slightly larger diameter screw which can be tightened more, seems to work better.

[Odoyle]

Had this exact problem with new set of sun visors. Used a small pair of pliers to squish the bracket that the pin slides into. 10 sec fix and their nice and tight now.

[dinghyguy]

i actually got a piece of soft plastic tubing and shoved it into the visor. The coefficient of friction on the pin was increased and thus i was able to make the visors stay where put.

cheers
dinghyguy

[Sycamore]

Hi all, thanks for the helpful ideas here -- I'm going to give a couple of things a try! (And, Bryan, I agree -- even though I'm what you might call 'average height' myself, the visors when lowered make it hard to see out of the windshield, and the sun would have to be pretty low in the sky for them to ever be useful; mainly interested in keeping them installed for original vehicle integrity purposes, not functional ones, but I'm not adverse to removal if need be -- it's better than having to constantly flip them back up and hold them there when trying to enjoy the car!)

-Todd

[DieselSpider]

I cleaned up the clamps on mine and they held fine. The problem some people have is because there were 2 different diameter pivots used for the visors so if you have the small pivot with a visor that requires those with the larger diameter you will have to sleeve the clamps or crumple the clamps to make the smaller.

The visors with the clamps set correctly hold well and having the visors up when the top is down can greatly reduce wind noise and buffeting. Mine were too tight on one side causing the frame on the drivers visor to fatigue and fail so I slit the vinyl cover with a razor so I could remove it and weld the wire frame back together with my wire feed welder.

The frames are pretty simple made mostly of steel wire with a wire Z brace and a piece of steel banding bent over to form the clamp on each end so they are fairly simple to repair if you have some basic welding skills and a wire feed welder.