Reframing the Problem

I am actually proud of this one. We bought a Ford Transit earlier this year and it was underpriced for the year and mileage, but we knew it needed a few fixes. One of those fixes was the passenger side sun visor.

I ordered the part and spent way too much time trying to figure out how to install it. The visor screws into a section called the headliner, which is basically a shelf attached to the fabric roof. I tried everything. I studied it, poked at it, pushed it, twisted it, and used every bit of brain power I had. The problem was simple and ridiculous. You cannot screw in the visor without taking down the entire headliner. The screw goes up into something, but there is nothing there to stabilize it. The screw just spins and you are supposed to get a nut onto it. There is absolutely no finger room to do that. The real fix is to pull down the whole ceiling of the van. The shelf and the fabric part has to come off. I did not have the time, the energy, or the confidence to take down the ceiling and put it back correctly.

We took an epic road trip across thousands of miles. My husband and I switched off driving. He is tall so the visor hanging slightly drove him crazy. It did not really bother me because it was out of my line of sight. We bought sticky velcro at Walmart. That worked for a day or two until the humidity won the fight. The shimmed screw job I did managed to last though, until we hit a bump on the road six months later and the plastic part popped out. Then the visor started hanging from the part that lets you swing it around. It was pitiful and a bit dangerous.

On the way to church yesterday I was staring at it and thinking. I thought a zip tie might work. I Could get it into the screw hole and fastened around the bar. It would look ugly but at least it would keep the visor up. Then I kept looking at it and realized something else. I could flip the screw. Instead of putting the screw head down and the screw body up into the headliner, I could do the opposite. I could put the screw head where I could reach it, push the screw body down, and put the nut on the bottom where I actually had room to tighten it.

It took about five minutes. My fourteen year old helped because it really is a tight space and you need three or four hands. But it worked. Completely worked. All it took was reframing the problem. I had to stop thinking about how it was supposed to be done and instead do what made sense for the situation.

Is it the prettiest thing in the world? No. You can see the screw body now instead of just the screw head. But if it loosens again, which is common in Transits, I can tighten the nut and fix it in seconds. That is a win. And it feels good to have figured out a solution that actually helps my family.

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