I am interested in a windscreen, but not enough so to invest $4-500 for the factory. I contacted Brownflyer about his, but he is not making them for the 2009. So I asked my wife if she could take an old sheet and make something for us to try. Just to see if it would be worth the cost.

Here is what she came up with. On a short drive - only up to 65mph - it does seem to cut down on the buffeting a little. but coming to the MINI from a motorcycle, I am used to wind, so I don't know if it is enough of a difference to be worth the cost.





Of course this is not going to do what a real windscreen would, but it gives us some idea...

 

At MITM, I seem to recall seeing a homemade one made out of plexiglass and attached to the seats with zip ties.....looked like it would work at least as well as the factory ones - and plexi is cheap, you can get it at your local Home Depot or Lowes.

 

I made one based on BrownFlyer's idea. It was pretty simple, the hardest part was finding mesh to use. I ended up using the mesh from the holder of an soft sided dog crate. Afterward I realized that the mesh panels from pop-up canopies would work really well too. Basically what I did was make headrest covers, carefully pin the mesh onto the covers, used chalk to outline where to cut the mesh, sew the mesh into the headrests and used velcro (the loop side) to make straps that could tuck into the plastic part of the seat binding. I did use canvas to bind the edges of the mesh and I also intergrated a zipper in between one of the headrest covers and the mesh so that I could radically change the seat positions (with respect to each other) without tearing the windscreen. Here is what it looked like:


Then, while I was at MOTD I bought someones used seatcovers. I wanted to put my windscreen into the seatcovers so I ended up putting zippers between both headrest covers and the mesh (so that I can use the seatcovers with or without the windscreen) and instead of the velcro flaps that tuck in between the leather and the plastic, I actually sewed Velcro onto the back of the seatcovers (the loop side) and to the front of the windscreen (the hook side). I wasnt sure velcro would be enough to hold the screen in place at the bottom but it has held up very well. Here are pictures of the winscreen integrated into the seatcovers:






This cost me nothing (but time), I happened to have all the parts lying around!

If anyone wants to do this on your own and has any questions, please ask. I would be happy to help!