Upgrades 25. Draught Excluder

Personally I don't find the car that draughty when driving it under normal use, especially with the hood bag sitting on top of the boot. This might be down to the fact I have lowered floors in an SV, and I also have the carbon seats which seem a bit larger than the leather ones. There is however an area in the middle of the car which does have a channel of air flowing through it. It's a little bit annoying if you forget and put something down loose on the tunnel (like a packet of sweets or tissue) and then part of it gets sucked down the middle and out of the car littering where ever you are!

I decided then that I would at least try and improve this, just as others had. For me, I wanted the solution to look professional and like it was meant to be there so I opted to make one myself and take my time with the approach.

My first job was to make the frame, which I did out of 6mm aluminium tubing from B and Q. I bought 4m (4 x 1m lengths) which was more than enough and allowed me a bit of experimentation when constructing it. I'll be mounting mine on the cabin side of the roll bar, that way I don't need to cut any bits out of it to allow for the roll bar cross members or rear struts, it will look neater, and then any air pushing up against it, will only push it into the cross member of the roll bar, which to me seems like the best approach anyway.

I offered up some card and drew around the roll bar so I could then cut a wooden jig to help me bend the metal. It is important to support the metal on both sides to avoid any kinking so the exact shape can be formed.

Once I had both sides bent into place, I checked them against the roll bar and measured again to work out where I can join it together. I opted to use some machine screws (with the head cut off) and some superglue to join the metal together. At this point I also realised that I now have a go pro, which I like to mount on the top of the roll bar, so I decided to created a slight kink in the top to allow for the bracket to be used even with the excluder in place.

Once I was happy with the final shape, I left the bottom part open temporarily so I could then push some heat shrink all the way around, I then joined the final open piece with another machine screw and super glue, and then finally overlapped the heat shrink and secured it all in place.

I had chosen to use some Airtex mesh to cover the draught excluder (the same material you see on the inside of waterproof/sports jackets). The next job is to cut the mesh to size and then to sew some bias binding around the edges of the fabric, ready to be hand sewn in place. I have also be left a few "gaps" so I can use some velcro straps to secure the final piece to the rollbar.

My wife took over at this step as she is a dab hand with a sewing machine, she took a lot of photos so you can see how the mesh is attached to the bar. I'll be brief on how it was constructed as I have limited knowledge of this part. First a template was cutout to make it easier to cut the fabric.

Then using this template, the fabric was cut out using a roller cutter.

My bar was not symmetrical, and this meant we needed to keep track of the drivers side to make sure we can hide any exposed stitching where it will be hidden against the roll bar. A Bias binding was sewn on to each point where I would use a velcro strap to attach it to the roll bar. Then an outer bias binding was attached around the whole thing. Up until now, all sewing was done by machine.

Once the binding was in place, the whole airtex fabric was hand sewn to the binding and stretched on as it was sewn.

I then took over and used some velcro tabs to secure the draught excluder to the rollbar. I created some press stud tabs to attach it to the chassis at the bottom. Once in place it looks pretty neat. I'd rather not have the velcro tabs on display but there is not much you can do about that to make it fully removable.

In terms of does it work, well yes it is actually much better, especially with the half hood on. The cabin becomes quite cosy and in the rain you don't get any of that back splash.