[MB07]

For those of you who have a roof rack on their bimmers know the howl it makes. I didn't want to purchase the Thule wind faring and then retrofit it to the BMW roof rails. Plus I saw one in the store and figured how hard could it be.

This is my first attempt, so bear with me.

Items Needed.

• 12" x 48" piece of plexiglass, lexan, duriplex, or polycarbonate, etc
  (I chose a 24" x 48" piece of Duriplex incase I wanted to make a second one)
• 3 feet of 2" diameter PVC pipe
• Black Paint - or whatever color you desire
• Automotive Edge Trim
• Super Glue
• Mounting Hardware
• 1/8" or 1/4" piece of scrap steal or aluminum

Tools Needed

• Heat Gun
• Utility Knife
• Clamps
• Tape Measure
• Straight Edge
• Sand Paper
• Drill
• Tap and Dye kit
• Angle Grinder

Ok. Lets get started and make the wind faring itself.

I created a template out of extra foam board I had laying around. That way I could get the curve of the roof.


Trace out your template onto the piece of plex.


Use your sharp utility knife to score the edge and snap the plex. Use your sand paper to sand down the sharp edges and to round your corners.


Well that was easy, lets kick it up a notch and make some brackets out of PVC.

Take your 3 foot piece of PVC down to 1 foot pieces. Then take your saw and cut the pipe right down the middle.


Grab your heat gun (and some gloves, it gets really hot) and start heating up your PVC pipe.


Eventually the pipe will get hot and wobbly. Once it gets to this point, get the piece as flat as possible.


Once it got flat enough by hand I got the piece really hot and wobbly and put the piece in between 2 blocks with clamps and then let it cool.


I let this sit overnight to ensure it was nice and cool and was going to retain its new shape.


Alright, now lets cut these pieces down and mold them with our heat gun into actual brackets. I can't tell you for sure what angle I ended up using, I can only say it depends on what you want the pitch of your faring to be. So you may have to play around with it. I would heat it up, mold it to an angle and mock it up on the car. I did this a few times to get the desired pitch.


Once you get one the way you want it, do it for the rest. You should end up with 3 brackets.


At this point I drilled my holes in the faring and the brackets and bolted everything together and set it on the car to make sure I didn't completely make a mess out of this.


With it up on the car I grabbed my heat gun again and heated the ends of the brackets and molded them around the roof rack itself. Once they cooled, I marked where I wanted to cut of off the excess and also where I wanted to drill my holes for the rack mounts.


Paint everything black.
Actually not everything. I only painted one side of the plex so the business side of the faring is nice and glossy.


Take your Automotive Edge Trim and go around the edge of your painted piece of plex. I super glued it because I want it to stay forever. I also wanted to glue hand to itself. (Not recommended, I am not to be trusted with glue.)


For the rack mounts, I have 3 1" x 1 3/4" steal plates I made. I cut these pieces out with an angle grinder and used my tap and dye to thread the hold for the bolt that will hold it in. These plates are very similar to the OEM plates that come with the BMW bike rack.
(I don't have pictures of those yet)

Bolt everything back together and mount to car.
I went to Michaels (store for the crafty) and bought 2" white vinyl letters in Helvetica (same font BMW uses apparently) and make a BMW decal that (I think) made this look legit.


That is all. I hope you had fun because I know I did. Until next time.

[philgli]

whoa. very cool DIY. What kind of funky fumes came off the PVC when the heated the crap out of it?

[MB07]

Originally Posted by philgli

whoa. very cool DIY. What kind of funky fumes came off the PVC when the heated the crap out of it?

It actually wasn't too terrible. However I have burnt PVC in the past and yes the fumes are quite pungent.

[Needbmwpartzz]

Nice job
Bravo!

[tdavis42]

Can we get pictures of how you eventually attached the brackets to the rack please.

It looks really good by the way I like the BMW logo you put on it.