OK, with over 1.5 million BMW minis sold since inception I figure I'm not the only one truly bugged by the absence of any factory or aftermarket rain visor/ventivisor/ventishade/whatever-you-want-to-call-it solution. Surely some significant proportion of those sold live where it at least occasionally rains. And not being able to crack the window to keep the windshield from fogging and let some fresh air in is a pain. I've written to WeatherGuard & other manufacturers and each one, if they respond at all, claim that our frameless doors preclude a solution. Not so....read on.

While attaching some Ventivisors to my trusty 1990 F-150, sitting side by side with my 2008 Clubman S, I just happened to hold up the piece to the Mini's A-pillar and lo and behold, the angles matched! So, some fiddling, minor paring et voila! Since it's not a truly bespoke solution it doesn't look perfect but, bottom line, it works - I can drive in a downpour with the windows down about 2 inches and little, if any, rain comes in.

The alignment along the A-pillar and the roof edge is perfect &, if one of the manufacturers would take this on, they could make it perfect - a U-shaped clip (kinda like the ones you put on door edges to prevent paint chips) could readily be made to attach the visor to the roof's drip edge and avoid the way I had to sticky-tape this one to the roof itself.

The trick with attaching this jury-rigged one is to cut the small sliver out of the visor where it attaches to the A-pillar and the roof edge, allowing the visor to then attach fairly flatly to both. How high it rides on & attaches to the roof is dictated by the necessity to clear the top of the window as the door opens (even allowing for the slight auto-down feature of the window). I don't like the way the visor stops short of the end of the door and so am considering covering the entire upper edge of the F-150 piece with the rear window piece made, I think, for an early model Dodge Durango - see photos. (Both ventivisors were bought at NAPA.)

Whaddayathink?

 

Definitely need to reach the end of the door as you stated. But very nice job on cutting out around the top rubber lip. And I never thought about this, but very good idea. I hate if my car is wet, and its not raining and I have my windows down. If I make a turn it pours off the roof into my car...maybe you should invent them and make some money =p

 

My wife has always wished that MINI had a door frame around the windows so that we could attach a good set of rain visors (the kind that have a thin lip that fits into the grove around the window frame). I don't like the kind that are stuck on to the roof and roof pillar as I feel they look cheap. Congrats on your ingenuity though.

 

So this post is a little old, but I too have been looking for some window vents (whatchamacallits) myself and found some on eBay by a company named Restyling Specialist. Since they are the ONLY ones manufacturing these window vents for MINIs in the US that I could find, I went a head and ordered a set. Well 4 days after placing my eBay order, they arrived today in a big ole-box via FedEx.

Attached is a picture of the vents just pulled from the box. My mini is going into the shop tomorrow to get programmed for the bluetooth retrofit I just installed and a few other fixes, like the High Battery drain issue. So I will not be installing these new window vents until I get my MINI back from the shop.

I will post my install comments and photos when I do the install.

BTW, here is the link to the vents/visors I purchased:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-Cooper-...item19c938e18b


-=Ryan

 

Hiyah, Ryan - thanks for the update; amazed that it's been so long since the initial post; am excited to see photos of your install when done. Does the quality of the product look good?, etc.

Aloha, Ali

 

I did a ton of work on my min so far this weekend and it's just Saturday evening. I am dead on my feet. One of my mini MINI projects today was to install the window vent/visor/deflector things.

The quality is very good. Nice strong plastic, tint about 30%. I started with the passenger side to get a feel for these things. Unlike any side window deflectors I have installed before, these came with clips. The instructions were straight forward, but the clips, don't actually clip, so I did not use them. The b&w photos in the instructions are terrible and hard to make out. However, these a definitely designed for the mini, as they fit very well.

You do need to pre-measure or pre-lineup where you want these to go, cause once you peel the tape off the sticky stuff and affix these vents to the car, they can not be pulled off and re-attached!!

So I got the passenger side installed and I was happy with it. The MINI's door window looks like it is going to hit the deflector but it just misses it. It helps that the minis window pop down a bit when you open the door.

So now I am ready for the driver's side... install when OK, except I accidentally placed it a tad to low and the mini door window just barely scrapes the deflector... but it working find.

One last thing... these deflects, when installed, leave a little gap a the top front, where the deflector bends and heads towards the back the car. The kit comes with pads and instructions for dealing with this, but I thought the pads where too small, so I added more padding and little bit of clear sealant. Once the sealant dries and it is noticeable, I will need to touch it up with some black paint.

Pictures attached. If I missed anything or you have any questions, let me know.

 

OH,... I did forget something... you will notice a small hole in the deflector in one of the photos, this because I did not use the supplies clips, as they did not seem to clip on to anything. The clips come with plastic push pins, which I purposely left out for the photo, so you could see the holes.

I put the push pins in and the deflectors looks great.

more photos: I also took some photos from inside the MINI, since there are no interior shots on the eBay store for Restyling Specialists, which is something I wanted to see.

-=Ryan

 

That's about the stupidest **** I've seen!
I'm speaking of the first post

 

Thanks, Ryan, for the nice write up. Set ordered. [But did you test how it works in the rain yet???]

 

Nope... just installed them today and it was beautiful out, and it should be nice tomorrow also... good thing, cause the instruction suggest no washing the car or driving in the rain for 72 hours after install.

It will rain here soon enough, I will post an update them.

Gheers!

 

Twister, nice comment. I mean the guy couldn't find any and tried to make some from something else and you blast him for it. Lighten up it is his car and he did something that no one else has. yea maybe not the best job ever but at least he tried.