Last week, I reached up to adjust the driver’s side sun visor in our car and it came off in my hands. I’d probably been a bit careless but I was trying to quickly block the sun streaming in through the side window after I’d turned a corner and I was concentrating mainly on the road. I think it was mainly trying to lower and rotate it at the same time which caused the problem but the result was that, although we had the bits, we didn’t a sun visor.

The assembly involved a lot of plastic, some of which was cracked or had sheared off, and a couple of awkward metal clips. Over the weekend I figured out how to remove the clips, which were still fixed in the car (insert a flat screwdriver and twist it, allowing the clip to be worked down – squeezing with pliers seemed ineffective and like to result in some nasty pinches). Further research revealed that a new replacement would be the best part of £200 and even one from a breaker’s yard could be over £30. Then Jane came across an idea, which I’d seen before but not tried, of using tissue paper along with superglue for plastic repairs.

It turns out that superglue wicks into the paper and quickly sets, creating a way to mould the adhesion around the target rather then relying on minimal natural points of adhesion. Doing a bit of further research also suggested bicarbonate of soda as another substance that could be used to add extra utility to superglue.

After a bit of fiddling around I seem to have achieved a sufficient repair that I’ve been able to fit the original visor (and clips) back into the car. It looks like new on the outside (or perhaps just a hair off perfect) and hasn’t fallen off yet although I’ll be extra careful for a while to come. I would say the results weren’t quite as marvellous as most YouTube videos you can find on the subject but probably enough to keep us going for now.