Installing Ghia Sunvisors

Standard Mondeo sun visors have a mirror on the passenger side and that's about it. However on the Ghia Mondeo and similar versions both visors have mirrors (which are bigger then the standard one), mirror covers and not only that but both mirrors have lighting so your girlfriend can put her makeup on before you go out at night! This was another standard feature on the higher spec-cars and can be easily added. Time taken depends on what wiring loom your car came with, it may be as simple as just plugging the visors in or you may have to splice the supply from the courtesy light illumination supply. If you have to splice the wires then look at about 40 minutes for completion.

You need:      

• Philips screwdriver
• Knife or watchmakers screwdriver
• 2 x Ghia sun visors (£142.10 each from Ford - Multiple colours available)

You may need: (Depending on the wire loom in your car)

• Wire cutters
• Soldering or crimping facilities
• Insulating tape
• About a meter and a half of wire

Alternatively:

• No alternatives detailed.

Right as per usual you could get the sun visors from Ford spares and I would imagine the price to be around £25 each for them, however taking them from a scrapped Mondeo offers a far more economical solution and I ended up paying £25 for both visors. They do, however, have a habit of splitting where people have opened the cover with too much force so make sure you get good quality ones! The pictures below show the old style passengers visor and the new illuminated Ghia visor.

The first thing to do is to remove the original visors. If you look at where they are attached to the roof you can see the two screw covers and you need to prise these two out with your knife or watchmakers screwdriver. Once removed you can unscrew the two Philips screws and remove the original visor completely (It helps to do turn the visor to the window when doing the inside screw) Then do the passenger visor so both are off and you should now be able to see holes where the visors were attached, fish around in here and see if you can find any wiring - most probably you won't so you will have to wire them yourself. This is not a big task but can take some patience!

In the middle of the headlining - just behind the sunroof cowl - is a small blanking plate which covers the roof aerial's retaining bolt. You can remove this using your watchmakers screwdriver or using fingers. You now need to run your power cable from the sun visor hole to this gap - it can take time as the cable snags on the various holes along the way but you should be able to do it fairly quickly

Next up you need to prise out the courtesy light from the cowl, unplug and remove it. Next up is to push your power cable from the aerial recess, under the headlining, and into the sunroof's cowl. You can now replace the aerial's plastic cover but before you do you need to trim a small section of it off to allow the cables to run smoothly - do this using a knife.

Next you need to solder or crimp the visor ends of your cable to the visor's supply, remember that the visor has a circuit inside it and, as such, it is polarised. Therefore make sure you use a power wire that has two clearly defined wires and connect the same wire to each visor.  It is also EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you solder or crimp this connection as it will be moved and strained whenever you move the sun visor, so don't just tape it!

You can now screw the visor back into the roof and make sure it turns correctly and also can be moved toward the windows if required. Now shut both mirror covers - this ensures that the lights are off so you can connect them at the other end. Now you need to splice into the courtesy light supply wires. The solid black wire is the ground and the Orange/Blue wire is the constant 12v supply. This is the stock option and allows the sun visors to be used when regardless of ignition. The alternative is to splice into the sunroof's power supply which will allow the visors only to be illuminated when the ignition is on.

A note on operation here: The illumination has two switches - the first is on the mirrors cover - so if you close the cover the light's will not come on, the second is a tilt switch so that if they get put into the raised position with the cover open then the lights will automatically turn off. One thing they don't do however is to turn off if you turn off the ignition but still have them down and the cover open, hence why you may want to wire them to the sunroofs ignition dependent supply.

And the finished product, with both visors installed. The button in the visor will vary the light intensity between normal and high - in this photo you can see the drivers side has been turned on high whilst the passengers side is on normal intensity.