Dealing With Broken Or Damaged Glass In Your Car Or Truck
Posted on: 12 March 2021
The glass used in your car or truck is specifically designed to resist impacts and damage as you drive, but it can be damaged. An auto glass repair tech should check a chip or crack in the windshield to determine if they can fix the damage or if the glass needs replacing.
Damage Inspections
When you notice a crack or chip in your vehicle's windshield, it is a good idea to take your car to an auto glass repair shop and have them inspect the damage for you. If the crack or chip is small enough, a technician may be able to fix the damage for you without the high cost of replacing the entire windshield.
Chips that are not fixed often turn into cracks in the glass, and while a glass tech can repair some, if the crack is larger than a dollar bill and still growing, it is not a good candidate for repair. Any crack that starts to spiderweb and grow is also not going to be fixable in most cases.
Additionally, chips that penetrate one side of the glass are routine, but if the impact was so hard that the glass is broken and the laminate between the inner and outer sheet of glass is damaged, the windshield is no longer safe to use, and even a small chip that is that deep can not be repaired. As such, the best option is to take the car to the shop as soon as possible after the chip occurs. This will allow the tech to fill it before it can start spreading or become too large to fix.
Repairing The Glass
Windshield repairs are made using an epoxy mixed and forced into the crack, using some special tools that allow the tech to remove the air and create a vacuum to draws in the material. The epoxy cures quickly, and once the auto glass repair tech fills the crack, the material bonds to the glass. The repair is often nearly impossible to see, and the bond between the epoxy and the glass is so strong that there is no loss of structural integrity in the windshield. Typically the tech can make these repairs in just a few minutes, and the cost is far lower than replacing the entire windshield.
Replacing Damaged Glass
Auto glass repair shops can help you deal with glass damage on any part of your car, but you can repair only the windshield because it is laminated glass. The rear and side glass is tempered and will shatter when impacted, so the glass tech must replace these panels with new glass.
A tech can replace these glass panels for you without too much trouble, but they may need a few hours to complete the work because it often involves removing trim inside the car, replacing the seal and glass, and cleaning all the broken glass out of the vehicle for you. For more information, contact a company like Advantage Glass Inc.
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