door visor saga

end of august, i got a set of door visors from a person in the Civic forums. I'm a sucker for 2nd hand items, since i've gotten so many stuff as the 1st owner - the value drops incredibly upon handing over the cash.

The "normal" visors


Both 3M tapes, but the left is 10 metres at $10.
The right costs $9.50 and is only 1.5 metres.

the visors came from Kah Motor, probably thrown in free when he bought the car. Price was quite alright at $30, except for the mess of old tape that he didn't remove. Plus scratches that you normally see on plastic and acrylic surfaces. So got a bottle of Meguiars PlastX to do some touch up.

the sticky problem is actually getting the best tape to stick it onto the door frame. Got a roll of 3M black foam tape from a home-based automotive trader at $10, which offers 10 good metres of tape. Then waited for my car wash day to mount the visors up.

after a while, i came to conclude

- the 3M tape holds well
- the purple tint of the visor looks oldie and headache to me
- the Mugen visors look better in terms of design and tint. Design is gapless between the front and back doors, more stylish and tint is similar to sunglasses.

Notice the differences??

so spent another $40 on a pre-owned set of Mugen replica visors. The real deal will cost me $200 brand new, so it's definitely more worthwhile to get the $40 ones. At least i can use the bottle of PlastX to touch it up, and i already have the tape. I don't get any additional ego with spending extra, so replica is not an issue.

installed it, another problem - the 3M tape couldn't hold the front passenger and driver ones well, because i flexed it to stick strictly along the contours of the door frame. Obviously this can cause it to snap off and become a flying saucer on the expressway, so took them down and used a better 3M tape and less forced flex.

so far, so good. The last problem is that it's a replica, so there are minor cosmetic differences such as absence of clips, holes and of course the Mugen badge. Ah well, heck.