Saturday, July 10, 2010

1500 Ghia visor clips



Speaking of 1500 Ghia visor clips, I'm very happy to finally have a pair of originals thanks to Larry Edson. They're not 100% perfect—both have minor cracks from use—but they're very presentable and far better than most others I've seen. It's rare for any of these clips to have survived due to an overly complicated and under-engineered design. This has lead to a cottage industry in 1500 Ghia visor clip replacements, some more successful than others. A few examples I've accumulated over the years:



I've seen a number of Ghias with these bent steel hooks. They work surprisingly well, taking advantage of the spring tension in the visor mounts to hold the visors in place, and they're simple enough to not call attention to themselves.



John Copello made these machined aluminum and powder coated clips, and it's possible that he might still make them to order. They follow the original design fairly closely but are blockier and have fewer rounded edges. They lack the flexibility that the originals have, of course, but they work. They're presentable but are clearly hand made.



Someone painstakingly cast these clips in resin and then drilled, carved and sanded them into a more rounded version of the originals' shape. They rely on a tension fit to hold the visors up, but the resin is brittle and I think they would probably break if used regularly.



These crudely fabricated aluminum clips were in my '62 when I bought it. They're not much to look at but they do the job.

A number of years ago someone in the Type 34 Registry had a quality reproduction made, but to get a set of them you had to be in the right place at the right time, and I wasn't. It's too bad a larger production run wasn't done. There are rumors of some investigation into a new high-quality repro. Hope it really happens.

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