My last Project XK post was a big one, so today we’re keeping it short and dealing with my ventvisors.
If you don’t know what a ventvisor is, you’re not alone. I didn’t know much about them until recently. A ventvisor sits at the top of your window, creating an overhanging edge. This edge means you can crack your window and allow air circulation without letting in a lot of wind noise and/or rain. Why would a person want to do this? Well, maybe you want to leave the windows cracked to let out heat while your rig is parked. Maybe you just want fresh air. Or maybe you’re parked at 13,000 feet and get hit with a sudden high-mountain hail storm and want to sit inside the vehicle without fogging the glass.
That’s exactly the situation I was in a couple minutes after taking the above picture, in which you can see my installed ventvisors along the top edge of the side windows.
As I said above, I really didn’t know much about them until I set off to get a set for the XK. I certainly never put one on any of my CJs. What I quickly found is that there’s a staggering variety of them out there. I went with AVS, whose parts on other vehicles have never let me down, and I chose a smoke color rather than a flashy chrome — in part because I only want so much “bling” on the rig, but also because I wanted to reduce visibility as little as possible. The biggest decision I faced, though, was one of simple design: in-channel or on-body?
Ventvisors used to be almost entirely on-body in design. They came with two-sided tape and would stick to the outside surface of the body around the door. I don’t like sticking things to my paint on principle, so I wasn’t excited about such a design.
Happily, ventvisors also come in an in-channel design these days: the plastic is formed to “snap” into the window channel between the rubber and the glass. Tape is again used, but it sticks to a non-exposed surface inside the door. That difference alone was enough to sell me on the in-channel design, but there’s another advantage, too: the in-channel design has a lower profile, obstructing the view from the cab less (it’s only a slight difference, but I’ll take what I can get).
The other difference between the two designs that’s specific to the XK is aesthetic: the rear window isn’t a full window, so an in-channel visor only covers part of the rear glass (as you can see in my picture above) while an on-body visor would go across the top of the door and cover the whole thing. I happen to like the smaller in-channel look better, but it’s totally an opinion thing.
Anyhow, there’s not much else to be said on these things. Here’s a picture of them in packaging:
And a close-up shot of them installed, with the windows open to give you the effect:
