Rebuilding a sunvisor

[Aurel]

The destruction of the foam in the sunvisor in older 911s is a common problem, that can be solved by ordering new ones (not cheap, around $250 a pair), finding a good set of used ones, or refilling with foam. I tried refilling with foam, and did not get very lucky: it created huge bubbles that deifinitely ruined them. Thus, I decided to rebuild them from scratch. I ran at the home depot and invested in a $5 sheet of insulation foam (0.5 in thick, perfect density for the job), and a $12 can of 3M 77 adhesive spray:

The supplies:


I used my old sunvisor as a template:


And drew the shape with a sharpie:


Cut it with this little electric saw:


And split it in half with a metal saw blade:

[Aurel]

(continued)

With a boxcutter, I cut the vinyl of the old sunvisor at the seal, except for the egdge facing the driver. This allowed to separate the vinyl skin from the foam. You can see the new foam, which was a pain to remove. I which I had not tried refoaming...


After removing all the old foam, her is how the frame of the sunvisor looks like:




Then, I sprayed a liberal amount of 3M77 on both halves of my new foam, let it dry for 10 minutes:



And sandwiched the frame between the two pieces. Here is the result:



Sorry for the small pics, I hope it is clear enough. So far, I am very happy with the result. It makes a very light and nice sunvisor. Next steps will be to sand the edges, and glue the old vinyl back, or put a new. I`ll post pictures of the finished sunvisor.

Aurel
78 SC Targa

[walt]

Nice work and an interesting solution to an old problem. Be sure to post the final pics.

I also tried the spray foam with poor results but thought it might work with some experimenting. Wound up buying used on E-Bay.

[Aurel]

At this stage, I could get some carbon fiber fabric, coat that with epoxy on the foam, and I would have a high-performance kevlar looking sunvisor...Wadayathink ?

Aurel