1966 Barracuda Sun Visor Repair

The preferred fix for a sun visor that has lost its stitching is generally not to drill holes in the thing and use rivets. Someone previously decided to do just that though. And it didn't hold up all that well to boot.

As can be seen in the previous photo, the rivets did hold things together somewhat, but the look isn't what I am going for.

Taking a close look at the rivets, someone spent some time installing them, and they aren't your standard run of the mill pop rivets. They are copper, and have been peened over with a ball-peen hammer!

First order of business is to get the rivets out without melting any plastic, which means I probably can't grind the peened end off. I did however find some small end nippers that were able to slide under the peen and raise it up far enough to get wire cutters under them to cut the flare off.

Then all the old thread got pulled out. Too bad about those holes. Not sure I can do anything about them.

I used a sewing awl (below) to stitch the visor back together. The needle that usually comes with one of these awls is designed for punching through heavy leather, so is necessarily quite large in diameter, but I found that a 135x17 needle used on my Singer 111W155 worked very well for this project.

Below is a photo of the finished product. I followed the factory holes, so I can't be blamed for the rather crooked stitch line. Although the three rivet holes detract some, I am of the opinion that it's good to reuse original items when they can be salvaged. So there are some rivet holes. Who cares?