ALT-1 What to do when your Windshield is Damaged
The vast majority of windshield damage is impact damage, usually caused by pebbles and small rocks which are kicked up by a nearby vehicle's passage. These kinds of impacts most often create a small nick or chip in the windshield. The other main type of windshield damage is stress cracking, which is not reparable.
A nick looks like a white speck in the glass, without any dark areas. The integrity of the glass has not been compromised, so the nick will not get any worse. Repair is not needed.
Chips can beclassifiedas bullseyes, half bullseyes, stars, or beeswings. What they have in common is that they always have a dark or silvery pitted area where the glass has been compromised. These chips can be fixed easily and almost invisibly when caught at this stage. Resist the urge to manually patch it or wash it out, since those materials just get in the way of the repair.
Chips up to the size of a quarter can be repaired by drilling into the fractured glass to reach the lamination layer which is sandwiched between the outer and inner glass, in a process not unlike a dentist drilling out a cavity. At that point, a clear adhesive resin is injected under pressure, then cured with ultraviolet light. The resulting patch has nearly the same integrity as the surrounding glass and is virtually invisible.
For all windshield chips, repairing them sooner is better. If left unattended, daily changes in temperature combined with the normal movement of the car will create stress at the point of impact. It will not take long before the chip grows into a combination break and then an outright crack: which will be much more difficult to fix.
A process similar to that used for chips can be used to repair small floater cracks which have not reached the edge of the windshield. Most glass repair companies can only repair cracks of a few inches.Industry standardslimit crack repairs to 14 inches, but some companies are willing to tackle single long floater cracks up to24 inches in length.
Edge cracks are those cracks which have reached the edge of the windshield. Should an edge crack intersect more than one windshield edge, windshield replacement is the only option.
Repairing minor windshield damage could be a DIY job, but in most cases it may not be worth the trouble: and could even be much more expensive than paying a professional glass company to do it for you. Windshield repair kits are not cheap, and they take quite a bit of skill to use well. A poorly patched chip will further compromise glass integrity: which is worse than not having patched it at all. If you are not absolutely familiar with what you are doing, you could easily wind up causing more damage than you started with.
The key to a successful DIY chip patch is to leave it as smooth as possible, flush to the glass and without any rough edges. Do not be upset if your result is not completely invisible. Very few windshield patches are. You probably will leave behind some small markings and maybe some minor distortion: but they are nothing to worry about so long as they are very small and smooth to the touch.
So long as you have comprehensive insurance with glass coverage, glass companies specialising in windshield damage will often repair minor damagefor free. Depending on your insurance policy, they may even be able to do it without voiding your no claims bonus.
Windshield damage is considered irreparable if it has damaged interior glass or the sandwiched laminate. Other conditions under which repairs arenot recommendedare impact points with three or more long cracks spidering out, stress cracks, and damage in the driver's primary viewing area which is within four inches of another repair.
