Sun Visors

My first project was to fix the sun visors. It seemed easy. Hah! One thing I've learned--when it comes to my car, it is never as easy as it looks.

The visors themselves were in great shape, but the little plastic rods that kept them snapped into place by the dome light had broken off. Fortunately reproduction rods are available through SSC Enterprises (my go-to shop for reproduction Mustang II parts--owner Scott is a great guy who has really helped me out with parts and advice).

Here's where I ran into problems: after so many years of baking in the sun, the plastic had melted inside the visor sleeve so it was not so simple as slipping the visors off and installing new rods. The rods were stuck in there! I tried to remove them with needle nose pliers but they didn't budge and I couldn't get a grip on them with larger pliers without ripping the vinyl on the visors. I got my solution on Mustang II Net. A member suggested that I drill a small hole in the end of the broken plastic rod, insert a screw, and pull on that with pliers. It worked! After that I was able to replace both rods--without damaging anything! :) This was a huge boost to my confidence & I felt like I could move on to more involved projects.

After fixing my visors I bought a paper visor sleeve (seen above) that is a reproduction of the one that came from the factory that shows how to start the car in cold and warm weather, and how to use the seatbelts.

Around this time, I formulated my goal for the car. Lack of funds meant that I couldn't turn my car into a show car, so I decided to just make it as presentable as I could and enjoy driving it. I decided to use reproduction and original parts and stick to options that were available through Ford at the time, so keeping a stock look. My car was missing some parts, so I also decided that I would try and find these parts so that my car would be complete.

With that goal in mind, and a small budget, I moved on to the next project: the radio.