1996 Legacy Visor Rebuild

[JPX]

Hello all. This post I will be showing how to replace the fabric on the sun visors from a 1996 Legacy. This is a common method across a variety of models and even across other Japanese makes.

 

The fabric was coming off the drivers size. The visor is a clamshell design where the fabric is wrapped around an MDF (cardboard) core and then the halves are folded and glued together.

 

A. Obtain headliner fabric - I bought a little too much at 2 feet x 6 feet. Hancock Fabrics has several colors of the headliner fabric. It has the same thin stretchy fabric as the original visor and a thin layer of foam on the backside.

B. Contact cement. Weldwood comes to mind.

C. Lots of clothes pins

D. Sharp scissors

E. clean padded work surface so you don't stain, snag the new fabric when reassembling the visor.

 

1. Remove visor from the car - 2 Phillips screws per visor

2. Remove excess torn fabric - so you can better see what you are doing

3a. Get a putty knife and start to separate the halves of the visor. Be very careful not to twist the putty knife as you will damage the visor when you apply too much leverage in one spot.

3b. I took this a step further by using the oscillating multi-tool with a flat blade (putty knife) attachment. This made things go a lot faster. But make sure you stay parallel to the half-line so you don't angle into the backing material.

4. Open the visor carefully to reveal the split halves. Pay attention to the plastic hook (for the mount closest to your rear view mirror) since that is also glued into the halves.

5. Clean up and shredded edges and loose material. You do not have to complete remove the hard spray foam unless it is loose or torn. The hard foam plays a role in securing the glues halves together and can still be "reused" when you reassemble.

6. For the passenger visor, you also have a mirror to watch out for. This will probably fall out since the foam fails before the glue does.Remember this is very light foam not to be confused with the heavy duty foam in the seats.

7. Use the visor backing material as a guide for the new fabric. Leave it "big" so you can trim to size. Keep in mind that the fold itself "uses" material and should be factored into the total size of the new fabric.

8. Do a dry run first with your big pile of clothes pins to make sure the fabric fits and can be secured well prior to glue. You may need to add relief cuts for the inside and outside corners. It is important you do not "bunch up" the fabric on the corners because the extra fabric layers will reduce the strength of the glue bond when closing the halves later.

9. Remove the fabric and run a bead of contact cement along the edge of the visor where the fabric will wrap around. Let the contact cement "set up" and get tacky before attempting to glue down the edges of the new fabric. If the contact cement is too wet, the glue with soak through the fabric and create ugly yellow stains on the fabric.

9a. For the passenger side mirror, you can glue a thicker block of foam to the mirror and then to MDF backing plate of the visor. You want to space it up enough for the mirror to sit in the frame at a good matching height. Insert the mirror if applicable.

9b. Insert the plastic pin and make sure it is glued to one side or the other.

10. Set the edges with the clothes pins overnight You want to let it set firmly because you will be pulling pretty hard on the fabric when you fold over the edge. So you want to the glue to be well set before the big fold.

11. Inspect your work and make final tweaks to the glue fabric

12. Put a bead of contact cement around the edges on top of the pulled-over fabric. Also put glue on the hard foam - especially where the hard foam was touching the other half of the MDF. Let the contact cement set up before folding over the visor.

13. Check the pin position and fold over the visor. Make sure the seam is straight and even. Use larger spring clamps and lots of clothes pins to secure the halves.

 

Tip - you can use an old gift card (iTunes, credit card, guitar picks) to push the fabric in between the halves as the glue begins to set up. You may need to do this to even out the fabric and it tends to stretch as the halves are folded. This can be done before the glue sets completely. You might have to be creative with small quantities of of contact cement for areas where the pushed in fabric won't stay down. Be careful since any soaked through glue will appear as a yellow stain on exposed fabric.

 

14. Reinstall in car. You might want to leave the windows open where possible since the fumes will be pretty strong for the next 1-2 days.

 

A variation on the contact cement is to use spray foam (similar to the insulation expanding foam. But I would only use this for strengthening areas where the MDF has been damaged or adding bracing in the "open spaces" of the folded halves if the visor feels like it is flexing too much. I don't recommend the expanding foam for glue the folded halves together because it is was too difficult to control where it squeezes out of/into and ultimately making a big mess.

 

Happy visoring!

Edited June 1, 2012 by JPX
Fixed large photo links

[heartless]

awesome write up - this belongs in the USRM!!

[1997reduxe]

yeah, wow that's great. just thinking how ratty my visors look lately. where'd you get those small red clothes-pins?

[JPX]

Those red clips are from the fabric store - Clover wonder clips. Used for holding fabric folds when sewing. Not cheap. But I had them anyway. Clothes pins or large paper spring clips work fine too.

[jomo]

Thread resurrection I know, but this is the post I found when starting out, but I eventually decided to go another route. Possibly less time consuming for those with a sewing machine and associated skills:

1. Use synthetic fleece. At least in my case it looks pretty similar and does not need to be hemmed. 
2. Make a double-layered rectangle of the material that is bigger than your visor, and sew around the rectangle's perimeter. This is like a blank to keep the two layers together while you mark, sew, and cut in more detail. One long edge can be folded over instead of sewn. If there is a "nicer" side of the material that you want to be the exterior when you are done, that goes inside now. 
3. Remove the visor from the car. Lay it down on the blank. Mark an outline of it, erring on the side of slightly larger, maybe a quarter of an inch. Since fleece stretches you don't need much seam allowance. Also mark where the clip-in rod point is, as you'll have to put a hole there so it can clip in.
4. Stitch around this marking, but start/stop such that there is a hole around where it attaches to the car large enough to slide the visor into. 
5. Cut around your stitching. 
6. Cut the hole for the clip-in point. If you are lazy (what I did) you can just do this to its exact side or even slightly smaller (since likely there will be some stretch as you put it on). If you want a more finished look (what would try to do if I were starting from scratch), cut a slightly smaller hole, then make some short relief cuts so you can fold it back in and hem it.
7. Optionally, but nice-to-have if the OEM foam padding is gone, cut and apply iron-on interfacing on the interior to give a more padded feel.
8. You may need to cut some fabric around the attachment-point hole, and may want to hem it afterward for appearance 
9. Invert the cover so the stitching and the interfacing are on the inside.
10. Slide the visor into the cover. 
11. Hand stitch the last part by the post that attaches it to the car

Here's mine. It's a bit rough: I cut too much by the attachment post, and if I were doing it again I'd try to hem around the clip-in rod. Maybe if I have time I'll do-over someday. This is not a collector car, though, just didn't want to be looking at bare MDF after the cloth disintegrated and ripped. 

Edited May 1 by jomo
clarity