Removing Johns ears!!!

Some of you SLK owners will already know what Airguides are.. They’re clear polycarbonate wind deflectors that fold away behind the roll bars when not being used. The SLK Owners Club UK that John & I are members of jokingly call them “Mickey Mouse Ears” as they resemble those, in a way.

My good friend John Keech has already purchased a few wind deflectors from me for previous SLK’s he has owned. His recent purchase is a white R172 SLK with these “Mickey Mouse Ears” or “Airguides”.. He wanted to install one of my wind deflectors which is possible on a car with these Airguides, although it involves a different mounting system than usual. He wanted to remove the Airguides completely. However, this leaves a massive void in the roll bar & slots for mounting the wind deflector were needed in the front section.

Pippen to the rescue!!!

With my bodywork/spray painting experience & the fact that i now carry out fibreglass repairs on boats, I was confident to take on the job of removing Johns ears & filling the void on the roll bars. Then spraying them to match his car color.

I first made a mould from the side of each roll bar that didn’t have the void. Then I could swap these round left to right & vice-versa as a backing plate to apply the plastic bonding material to.

Once the bonding material reinforced with fibreglass had set, I was able to fill the outer surface to a perfect finish.

Boom!! The voids are no longer!!..

The next step was to prepare the aluminium exterior surface of the roll bars & spray them with epoxy primer to bond to the aluminium, followed by high build primer to allow me to achieve a fantastic surface to paint onto.

Once the primer had dried, I flatted it & sprayed with basecoat in the color of Johns car (650 Calcite white). Then clearcoat to give a high gloss like that on the car. On the front section of the roll bars I cut a slot to accept the upper mounting brackets for the wind deflector

John decided on the SLK Owners Club UK logo & my logo in the bottom left corner for the graphics on his Wind Deflector . He also purchased r172 roll bar inserts with the Mercedes-Benz star logo laser engraved into them.

John received them earlier this week. He & another friend of ours, Karl Royce, installed them this morning. (check out Karls amazing animal portrait artwork).https://www.karlroyceart.com/

I think they look amazing color coded to match his car & John is very pleased to have his roll bars back in place complimented with the Wind Deflector and roll bar inserts