Do-it-yourself car glass repair

Cracks, chips and holes on the windshield of a car are not very pleasant consequences of driving on poor quality roads. One small pebble is enough, which will fly out from under the wheel and leave a chip. Such a chip may not even be noticed in time, but due to the fact that the windshield constantly experiences vibrations, the crack begins to spread and branch out - with such glass you will not be able to pass the inspection.

The driver faces a dilemma: buy new glass or repair the old one.

The first option, of course, is preferable, because new is still new, but repairs carried out in a car service with all the equipment will still not give guarantees. There is also a third option - do-it-yourself car glass repair, this is quite possible. If you have minimal experience, you can get rid of through holes, shallow chips and small cracks on your own.

And even if there is no experience, then you can find many video instructions on the Internet.

DIY glass repair

First of all, you need to make sure that dirt, dust and moisture do not get into the crack. To do this, you can use ordinary transparent tape. The view will be a little limited, but you can drive to the store, buy a repair kit and safely get to the garage.

If a pebble flew into your glass during rain, fog or snowfall, and you don’t have adhesive tape with you, then you should try to use the wipers as little as possible - wipe the glass with a rag, and not across the crack, but along it.

Glass repair kits

Kits can be professional and amateur. Professional ones are very expensive, but they include everything you need:

• an injector for injecting polymer into a fracture;
• glass drill with special diamond drills;
• curvimeter for measuring unevenness;
• films with hardeners;
• tubes with polymers;
• UV drying lamp.

Such sets are produced both in Russia and in other countries.

The car enthusiast kit includes:

• syringe with locking bracket;
• disk support for installation on the windshield;
• polymer composition.

The support disk can be either self-adhesive or in the form of a suction cup.

Glass repair steps

There is no fundamental difference in what you repair - a chip or a crack. First of all, you need to conduct a thorough inspection to establish the boundaries of damage, because there are many microcracks that are difficult to notice.

First you need to remove all contaminants from the resulting recess. This is done with the help of napkins and car chemicals for the windshield. All dust must be blown out using a compressor or an ordinary pump. Then this entire area must be degreased to increase the adhesion (adhesion) of the polymer to the glass, and the glass should be left to dry.

If we are talking about a crack, then you need to think about how to stop it. To do this, one or two recesses are drilled at the end and at the beginning of the crack, and a crack is brought into them by light tapping. They will help to slightly relieve internal stress from the glass and stop the crack from spreading.

Windshield drill - diamond, it is suitable for drilling ordinary glass and ceramics. With the same drill, you can also clean the chip itself from dust.

Drilling through holes is only necessary if the damage is deep enough. If you see that the crack touched only the upper layer of the triplex, then the recess should be about the same depth. If the crack went radially - like a cobweb, then you need to drill near each crack.

When the surface is prepared, it begins to directly fill it with a transparent polymer filler. This process is long and boils down to the fact that you install a support disk on the glass, insert a syringe with polymer into the “nipple” of this disk. Read the instructions carefully: you need to apply pressure to the syringe - push the plunger - but so that the polymer flows out slowly. Using the clamp, fix the syringe in this position for several minutes.

It is also worth saying that windshield repair is best done in bright natural light, that is, in the sun, since the polymer crystallizes when exposed to ultraviolet light. If there is an ultraviolet lamp, then the process will proceed faster.

The polymer will fill the chip itself and flow down the crack. In this way, it is necessary to achieve complete filling of the crack with polymer. If there is no time to wait, then the polymer can simply be squeezed out of the syringe into the recesses by hand, but with this method its consumption will increase significantly.

When all windshield damage is filled with polymer glue, you need to leave the car in the sun for several hours - the glue completely crystallizes in 4-9 hours.

After that, you need to clean the glass from polymer residues, you can do this with a blade, but very carefully - hold the blade strictly perpendicular to the glass.

Next comes polishing with a grinding paste or a grinder with a glass polishing attachment.

In the same way, chips and cracks on the rear and side windows are repaired.

Repair of cracks is necessary not only for the passage of MOT. Any bumps on the windshield create glare that can dazzle the driver. Cracks and chips must be repaired immediately after they appear, otherwise they will spread very quickly and the glass will become unusable either for repair or for further use.

Video tutorial on repairing car windows from chips, cracks, etc.

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