Pitted My Windshield... (1 Viewer)

[emtee]

This may be common knowledge to most, but I learned the hard way: When grinding on steel, don't do it in the vicinity of your rig's windows. My driver's side window is pretty freckled, and the windshield has a couple of pits in it that catch the WS wiper perfectly to create a smear right through my line of sight. I HATE that!

Other than replace the WS, anybody have any ideas on how to address the damage? I suppose I could flip the WS around and let the passenger deal with the smearing... (ah, the simple beauty of the 40 series )

I don't understand how I managed to do that; all my grinding is done on the bench, which is a good 10-15' from where I park the rig; never had this happen before...sigh...

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

Wait till the bits embedded in the paint start rusting

I learned the hard way too.

I've heard that you can polish windshields with toothpaste, but I would think you would have to remove the metal that is sunk into the windshield first. You should probably use a torch or plasma for that, that should fix all your problems

 

[emtee]

Didn't even think about the rust issue. How bad is that when the GLASS on your rig starts to rust away?!

I guess I've got nothing to lose here...I'll try carving out the metal bits with a ceramic attachment on the Dremel and then see if the local glass shop can do their magic with the chip repair technique...? Man, that's gonna take awhile.

If that won't do the trick, it's plasma time. New WS is only $70 or so. It's only money, right?

 

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I would call the local glass shop and see if they've run into this before? Hopefully they've got some old geezer in the back who knows exactly how to fix this

 

[John McVicker]

I would call the local glass shop and see if they've run into this before? Hopefully they've got some old geezer in the back who knows exactly how to fix this

Look up Eastwood.com They have a kit for I think less than $50 that will remove small scratches. Has to be small enough so that your fingernail won't catch as you slide it by. If your pits aren't too deep it will help. I used it a couple of years ago & it did the trick for me.

Good luck, John

 

[emtee]

Hmmm...I'll check that out, but these pits stopped my ice scraper cold! (That's how I found them: scrapescrapescrape...CHUNK. What the...?!?!?)

The local glass shop has done all the windshields on my wife's Dodge; I'll see what they say.

Thanks guys!

 

[rjcruiser]

Wait till the bits embedded in the paint start rusting

Yeah...that's how I realized a little piece of metal was in my eye after grinding some rust off of the brake cylinder. Two days later, this black speck was in my eye and I couldn't get it out. Fortunately, the local eye doctor was able to take care of it. I know...I know...I should have been wearing safety glasses. And yes, my wife said the same thing.

 

[NMuzj100]

I just used a Fix-a-Windshield chip kit (~ $10) on my two vehicles with pretty good results. Between the two vehicles I had about six stars and a bunch of small pits. I was able to eliminate about half of the stars and improve most of the others (about the same as my experience with windshield shops). All the pits are gone. The stars that came out well were new. The ones that did not get completely fixed were old so they probably had contaminants that interfered with the process.

It's in all the auto stores and online at amazon.

 

[emtee]

Hey, cool! I'll check that kit out. I used a dremel with a masonry attachment to get the metal out of the WS, but the driver side window is going to be a little more labor intensive. This might be the ticket to fixin' the pitting, though.

Thanks!

 

[emtee]

Yeah...that's how I realized a little piece of metal was in my eye after grinding some rust off of the brake cylinder. Two days later, this black speck was in my eye and I couldn't get it out. Fortunately, the local eye doctor was able to take care of it. I know...I know...I should have been wearing safety glasses. And yes, my wife said the same thing.

EEEeeee My dad had that happen; same deal. He's religious about eye safety now; safety glasses/goggles/shields everywhere in his shop.

 

[Zack1978]

I own a 2000 Celica GT-S 6spd with 22,000 miles on the clock, it's my summer only toy. The first summer I had it some OLD lady backed into my front bumper, very little damage other than the bumper cover being mis-aligned and paint damaga. So it went to "the best Toyota body shop in NJ!" and when I got the car back ALL the FxxxING glass was pitted, and at that pont the car only had about 2,000 miles on it! I fought and argued and argued and argued and sorta got nowhere, I could not prove it and the pitting is not horrible. I still get pissed today whe I look at the glass because I know they did it and refused to make good on it!

Zack