The mesh sunroof shade is, as so many agree, a very bad design decision on MINI's part. I tried something this morning that seems to work pretty well, though I need to refine it.

I bought extremely thin cotton material (in an off-white color) at a material store and cut it to exactly match the exposed mesh shade. I then used high quality fabric tape and taped it on all four sides, stretching the fabric so that there are very few bumps. It's important to cut it exactly so that there are is no fabric that overlaps over the edge.

Now I can open and close the shade with just a *touch* more resistance. For some reason the tape on one side only seems to buckle a tiny bit -- could be a number of reasons. I am going to try to find a more high-tech material to use, one that is extremely thin but doesn't have the texture of cotton fabric.

It seems to work and I will see how long the fabric tape lasts. Another option would be to spray glue the fabric onto the entire mesh, though this would be risky for obvious reasons. It would be better however, as there would be no additional mass that tape adds, even though fabric tape is extremely thin.

This is a touch ghetto but actually looks totally clean from the inside of the car and does a fantastic job at keeping the sun out and turning the cabin into an oven when you don't want the sunroof open. The cool thing about this is that the fabric lets in ambient light -- you don't get any direct sun, but you still get a little bit of that airy feeling.

Man, someone could make a good amount of money if they offered a replacement shade assembly for the stock one that didn't have the useless mesh but a solid material that, again, let a touch of ambient light through.

 

I had though about doing something along the same lines but with a gray material to match the headliner. But then after living with the mesh for a while my first summer I found that when I had the sun roof to the full open position the mesh kept the bugs and flying debits out while on the highway and still let air and light thru. I ended up with Zippie Shades and they keep the sun out when teh roof is closed and still allow for the shade to do its job.

What some one could really make money on is a secondary shade setup that would also roll back but also allow the mesh to stay intact.

Hope it continues to work for you. Another thought I had was to use a iron on tape as those I have found while doing other upholstery jobs has very good holding strength compaired to regular fabric tape and is actually thinner. The only problem with the iron on tape would be that you would want to remove the whole mesh assembly to avoid damaging other parts of the car.

 

I also use the zippee shades, it's the best of both worlds.

 

I used to hate the mesh cover as well until I did 5% tint on the sun roof and now I am very pleased! Dark when I need it but not too dark to still enjoy without the mesh shade closed.

Btw, tinting the sun roof is very cheap (about 25 bucks alone) and only takes 15 minutes if a pro does it.

 

YES. I'm really surprised that no one has offered this yet, considering all of the things -- many of which are very esoteric -- that you can get for a MINI.

 

If anyone wants to know/cares: this mod is working out great and stays secure. So if you don't want to deal with this curious design choice by MINI then you can do something about it without having to do the Zippee thing (which is cool but is not convenient for me, personally).

 

Can you post a pic? Interested to see what it looks like.