First up, thanks for flagging this one up, G.
I won it - bit of a last minute bidding flurry, in the end it went for quite a bit more than a penny plus postage.
This is a Type I original BMW wind deflector, and unlike the later Type II involves no drilling to your car. It is designed for cars without roll hoops, and in theory fits in about 15 minutes.
I was a bit miffed to find that all I got in the post was the wind-deflector itself. It was in good condition and well wrapped, but it was minus two important pieces - they key to operate the locks and the mounting brackets to actually fix it to the car. Thankfully a complete set of these can still be bought from the $tealer for the princely sum of £23 inc. VAT, so I now have new locks, two keys and the necessary brackets.
Fitting turned out to be a complete PITA. In theory, all you do is pop out the inserts in the top of the turrets and fasten the bracket to the roll-hoop mount underneath using the nifty expanding fingers on the brackets.
This is where I came unstuck - my turrets are filled with polystyrene and a plastic plug seemingly to keep muck out of the roll-hoop brackets. It proved impossible to extract this through the hole in the top of the turret, so I had to remove them. The real PITA is that two of the screws that hold the turrets on are obscured by the storage box, so that had to come off too! Having stripped what felt like half the trim off the car, it was then an easy matter to cut the polystyrene, put the turrets back on, reassemble the car and finally fit the deflector. Took me two and half hours!
I took a couple of pics of what I found underneath the trim. Look to me that the outer roll-hoop mounting tubes are welded to the car and that the threads are there to bolt the inner ones on should I ever choose to add roll-hoops (in fact I could probably have fitted roll-hoops in the time it took to do the deflector
). The cable you can see if for my own CD multi-changer which is fitted inside the storage box. The second pic shows how the seatbelt reel sits and how the belt is anchored to the top of the roll-hoop mounting.
This is the inside of the turret, showing how it is filled with polystyrene and had a plastic cap that goes into the roll-hoop mounting, and how I simply cut this away to allow the deflector bracket to fit through.
I'll post some more pics up of the deflector on the car. I had a quick test drive and it certainly works. Will take a little getting used to looking through the mesh in the rear-view mirror.
I've now been and ordered the proper bag to keep the deflector in, as now I've fitted it, the hardtop will be going on for winter!
All in it works out at about £120 including posatge. I'm quite pleased with that as it is all new parts apart from the deflector itself. The list price in my 2000 accessories brochure is £180.
Cheers R.