Reupholster Sun Visors

I'm sure most of you will never have a desire to do this; in my case, I was reupholstering my headliner and wanted my sun visors to match. In any case, I figured I'd share my experience and lessons learned.
I started off by simply taking a razor blade and cutting along the seam.

Continue removing the old fabric and you'll notice that some of it is tucked underneath the mirror. This is one continuous piece of fabric, so you'll need to cut it at one end. Once you do, you can simply pull it out from underneath.

Now to remove the swivel thingy. Rotate it to the position as shown. I repeat, YOU MUST ROTATE IT TO THIS POSITION, or else it will not come out. Once it is in this position, simply pull it out. It will take a lot of force, but I promise you, it will come out.

Now you can pull the two halves apart from one another. You can do this by hand, but a plastic trim tool certainly helps.

When I did mine, this little "clip" was loose and it took me a while to find out where it came from. You can see it in this picture.

Remove the mirror and "extender thingy". They have clips that hold them in place. They're self-explanatory and super easy to remove.


I used a razorblade to remove the thingamabob shown here. You WILL break this part while removing it, but it's super easy to fix with JB Weld when reassembling. HELPFUL HINT: It is difficult to see, but there is a natural seam. Cut along this seam to make the whole process easier.

Now, both halves are ready to be upholstered. I chose to use adhesive to join the fabric to each half, rather than going the stitching route. I upholstered the visors with the same material I used for the headliner. 3M 90 adhesive spray works wonderfully. HELPFUL HINT: Gently tuck the corners over the edge first, then tuck the straight sections. This is the easiest way to avoid creases on the edge of the visor.

I failed to take many pictures during the reassembly, but if you've made it this far, the reassembly should be self-explanatory and a piece of cake! You'll have to cut slits in the fabric to insert the mirror and "extender thingy", but it's super easy. Here's the finished product!




I'm such a schmuck... I put the damned sticker on upside down!!!

 

glad it worked. Visors are usually hard to work on.
even better if there’s a way to fix or strengthen whatever seems to cause them all to fail over time, sometimes quickly.

another option is Rosen visors to see through and not block everything.

 

Nice work, visors are not fun. Last set I did I sewed everything since I was using pleather.

 

WOW that looks great! I'm completely ignorant to all things-sewing, what kind of stitch is that and how do you manage without any excess material "overhanging"?

 

One of the side effects of growing up with a mother who in a previous life before I was born was a seamstress. I can also do needlepoint, crochet and knit. Or at least I used to be able to a bit over 4 decades ago.

As for the stitch it's known as cross stitching, commonly used for stitching steering wheel covers.

Here's a good video to show how, this guy has a lot of really good upholstery videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wf69UEFv_o

And just for fun the steering wheel I did using the same stitch. Plus some other interior work. It's tedious but sort of calming as you just have to take your time doing it.