- Joined
- Apr 22, 2019
- Points
- 74
At the end of Winter 2021, we had a sunny day and I decided to put the roof down for one last blast before winter finally hit. As I folded the roof back, the rear window had an unnatural fold in it, which I decided to simply pop into place using my hand. As soon as I hit the window, I thought, “that was a bit too hard…” and instantly the window split! After 20yrs, I wasn’t upset with the screen, but more angry with myself. After the initial “oh Christ, what do I do now?” moment, I bought some Gorilla clear tape and made the window water tight for the winter. The tape held up incredibly well, with no leaks, but it was a short term fix until I could get a new window.
I approached BMW for a new window and that was almost £400, various traders on eBay who wanted to see the car first, then come back and do the work which would take a day and at this point I decided to have a go at it myself…what can go wrong?
I read the horror stories from others about almost divorcing their other half, others who had started then quit and bought a new roof etc etc, but it seemed within my skill set to do this simple, zip out, zip in replacement myself.
I spent hours researching how to do it, which provided some guidance, but sometimes, you just had to get on with it. As a boss of mine once said, JFDi. I'll leave it to others to explain the acronym.
So, new window ordered from Germany at €93 delivered and off I went! Window was ordered from here www.Cabrio-Heckscheibe.de. The window was ordered on a Sunday night and delivered on Friday morning by DHL / Parcelforce.
Step 1 - Take photo of old window and convince myself this was do-able….I then took the passenger seat out and this was a master stroke. We definitely needed the space to do the stitching and provide some working room.
Using the supplied tools, I then stripped the roof material from inside the black bead all the way around and went searching for the zip retaining clasp which was easily found.
From here, using a small flat screw driver, I wiggled out the clasp and realised, this was it.
From here, breaking the zip seal was straight forwards with the screwdriver and out popped the old window. Definitely in it now!
I took the opportunity to vacuum out the area behind the seats as the last time this was done was probably 20 years ago! Also a good time to clean down the plastics as they were covered in dust.
Next step was to offer up the window and make sure it fitted. I also left it in the sun, on a black background to heat up the plastic and make it more pliable. This was a great idea as when the plastic cooled down, it was clearly more rigid. Definite tip for others!
From here, we lined up the zips and zipped it in. We had a few false starts where we connected the zips and it was too tight, but on the third attempt we got it just right. Another tip would be to lay the screen on the boot on a towel and offer the internal zip upto the new window. This makes alignment really easy and from here it simply zipped in. We maybe over analysed how to do this, so in the end we lined up the tabs on the zip and in she popped.
Once zipped in, we put a few stitches across the zip to stop it opening again and tried the roof and it worked! The zip stayed “zipped,” and I tried it a few times to make sure.
I then went around fettling the material under the outer bead of the window and that was it. Whole job took about 1hr 45mins, and the result looks brill!
Hopefully this will be of use to others and I can't recommend the supplier highly enough as other UK suppliers were offering the same product for twice the price.
P
I approached BMW for a new window and that was almost £400, various traders on eBay who wanted to see the car first, then come back and do the work which would take a day and at this point I decided to have a go at it myself…what can go wrong?
I read the horror stories from others about almost divorcing their other half, others who had started then quit and bought a new roof etc etc, but it seemed within my skill set to do this simple, zip out, zip in replacement myself.
I spent hours researching how to do it, which provided some guidance, but sometimes, you just had to get on with it. As a boss of mine once said, JFDi. I'll leave it to others to explain the acronym.
So, new window ordered from Germany at €93 delivered and off I went! Window was ordered from here www.Cabrio-Heckscheibe.de. The window was ordered on a Sunday night and delivered on Friday morning by DHL / Parcelforce.
Step 1 - Take photo of old window and convince myself this was do-able….I then took the passenger seat out and this was a master stroke. We definitely needed the space to do the stitching and provide some working room.
Using the supplied tools, I then stripped the roof material from inside the black bead all the way around and went searching for the zip retaining clasp which was easily found.
From here, using a small flat screw driver, I wiggled out the clasp and realised, this was it.
From here, breaking the zip seal was straight forwards with the screwdriver and out popped the old window. Definitely in it now!
I took the opportunity to vacuum out the area behind the seats as the last time this was done was probably 20 years ago! Also a good time to clean down the plastics as they were covered in dust.
Next step was to offer up the window and make sure it fitted. I also left it in the sun, on a black background to heat up the plastic and make it more pliable. This was a great idea as when the plastic cooled down, it was clearly more rigid. Definite tip for others!
From here, we lined up the zips and zipped it in. We had a few false starts where we connected the zips and it was too tight, but on the third attempt we got it just right. Another tip would be to lay the screen on the boot on a towel and offer the internal zip upto the new window. This makes alignment really easy and from here it simply zipped in. We maybe over analysed how to do this, so in the end we lined up the tabs on the zip and in she popped.
Once zipped in, we put a few stitches across the zip to stop it opening again and tried the roof and it worked! The zip stayed “zipped,” and I tried it a few times to make sure.
I then went around fettling the material under the outer bead of the window and that was it. Whole job took about 1hr 45mins, and the result looks brill!
Hopefully this will be of use to others and I can't recommend the supplier highly enough as other UK suppliers were offering the same product for twice the price.
P
