Sun Visors

The chrome on the sun visor hardware was toast, so I removed them from the visors to be re-done.

When everything came back from plating, I gathered up the pieces to put everything back together.  There was a mishap in the plating and one of the screws got lost.  Of course, it was a flat head screw with a larger than normal head so I couldn't get an exact replacement.  I ended up buying a pack of 50 from McMaster-Carr and sent two of them off to get chromed.  That way, both screws would be identical, though not quite right.

First I had to clean the vinyl on the sun visors.  As you can see, they were pretty dirty as the top one hasn't been cleaned yet, while the bottom one has.  I find that 409 cleaner and a bristle brush do wonders on cleaning vinyl.

The next problem was that the rods fit through a framework in each visor.  The chrome plating made them enough thicker so they wouldn't go in.  At this point, I have a couple of choices, neither of which is good.  I can grind down the rods to make them undersize and get them re-chromed so they end up the proper diameter to fit into the framework.  The other choice is to try and enlarge the framework holes.  A quick pass left me thinking that the latter won't work.

So for now, I just packed everything away for another day.

I've been getting another batch of parts together for chroming, so I decided to solve the sun visor issue.  After re-visiting the problem, the only solution was to grind off the new chrome on the rods and get them re-chromed.  First I straightened each rod so when it was rotated, it would spin evenly.  Then, using a Makita battery drill to spin the rod, I used a stationary belt sander with a coarse grit.  It took quite a while as chrome is quite hard.  Eventually, I got each rod so it fit into a visor with just enough force so the visor wouldn't fall down with vibration in the car.  I left the end undersized so that even with new chrome, it would still fit through the visor.  The last thing I did was to put heat shrink over the rod where it fits inside the visor.  That way, no new chrome would enlarge the rod.

In the process of getting the mounting screws together to be chromed, I remembered that I was missing a couple of screws that fit into the end of the rod.  These are large head and prevent the rod from falling out of the mounting bracket.  I had bought some large pan head screws for the pinch weld trim.  They were 4mm, the right thread for the sun visor rods.  I rounded over the edges and made the head the correct diameter.  You can see the progression in the left picture, far left screw is original, center one is after grinding to get the correct shape and the right one is after several grits of both dry and wet sanding, finishing with a coarse buffing wheel.  The right picture show how the screw fits into the rod in the bracket.

These screws look great with just the polishing, but being steel wouldn't stay that way, so I added them to the bag for chroming.