On the highway today atg about 60mph, i heard a thwomping sound on the closed sunroof.. .i saw a long piece of rubber flapping in the wind. I pulled over to find out it was the rubber strip aboe my windhsield that had detached on the passenger side and was loose till about halfway through the top of the windshield...

going to call the service dept. on Monday to have that fixed... anyone else experienced this?

 

actually the stripping on one of my older cars has had the same thing happen albeit at about 90mph.

i think in cali, the stripping gets hard over the years and brittle because of the sun and lack of moisture, so mine was bound to go.

however i replaced it wiht about $10 dollars worth of material from teh dealer.

i am actually kind of surprised how bad the build quailty is showing lately on the minis.
over the last week i have read of
1) your weather stripping story
2)broken 3rd brake light on top of the boot part
3)cracking leather
4)cracking leather from steering wheel

this is quite bad actually

 

I have had to have mine fixed twice. First time I took it to the dealer and they re-installed it while I waited. The second time I had just passed a slow moving truck and the molding came loose and scared the heck out of me, I thought there was someone pounding on my roof as I was making my high speed pass. I fixed it myself the second time. It helps to get the molding hot and thus pliable in the sun and then I used a tool that looks like a dull pizza cutter that is used to install the rubber bead into the frame of our home window screen. I could hear the molding “pop” into its slot. The molding gets very hard, almost brittle when cold, but very soft and pliable when hot. The dealer re-installed mine on a cool and cloudy day and they obviously never got it attached properly the first time.

 

Cheers!
Clover

 

mmmm......more problems...

 

well, at least its easy to fix.. though im not going to mess with it, i'll go slower till monday. it could be worse, you know?

 

>>my windshield molding had pooched out in the middle. We worked it back into place, but several days later, while motoring with Yucca Patrol in Colorado, it came almost totally loose and was banging on the sunroof.

I had the same thing. The dealer told me a bunch of cars were built with windshields mounted too low, and molding coming loose was among the results. Dealer replaced the entire windshield, and the problem never came back. Of course, the windshield they installed later spontaneously cracked while parked overnight in my garage. Gotta love that MINI glass... NOT.

 

I saw a MINI driving down the road with this rubber strip flopping all over the place...!

 

That was probably me!! Happened to me a while back to on a 20 mile 80-90mph run. I replaced it with some silicone and it's been fine since. The build quality of these cars is indeed underwhelming.

 

Same thing happened to me while driving through the AZ desert at about 90 MPH. It was mid-spring, so it wasn't dreadfully hot out, but hot enough, I guess. I called the dealer who said to pop it back in and come by the next day. I popped it back in and went on my way, but it came right out again. I ended up taping it in place with scotch tape (removes easily with no residue after a day or so) and brought it in to have the dealer fix it.

I think I remember them telling me that they had seen it happen a few times before, and that the strip isn't supposed to have adhesive behind it but is held in by friction. Apparently on some builds the gap is a little too big and the rubber piece comes out. They fixed it by putting some caulk behind it. Hasn't happened since.

BTW, I don't think it has anything to do with the age of the car (or insulation) since it happened when I had only about 3,000 miles on her.

 

my car has 306 miles on it - so i concur.

 

Our 2004 Mini is doing the same - passenger side windshield molding pops out at 60 mph and flaps in the wind. The car is 1 week old. Since we were on a weekend road trip, I used scotch tape to hold it down. After reading the forum I plan to fix it myself probably with silicone adhesive as my Mini dealer is 50 miles away. An inconvenience but am otherwise tolerating it so far as it is the only thing wrong with the car. :smile:

 

My trim was always kind of loose and wobbly since the day I picked the car up. I thought that's just how it was supposed to be. A couple weeks ago at around 1800 miles on the car, the trim started to pull out on the driver's side while I was on the highway. Fortunately, it didn't completely detach and start flapping in the wind.

I took the car in to my dealer last week and they replaced the whole piece. It is now very solidly mounted with not a hint of wobble (like I would have expected it to be in the first place). I'll be doing quite a bit of highway driving again this weekend so we'll see how it holds up. :smile: