Bruce, where do you learn so much about so many different subjects? You remind me of a friend's step-father who spent 20 years in the Navy on submarines, was knowledgeable about a everything from nuclear science to raising crickets for bait, and his excuse was that he spent most of his free time reading, since there wasn't much else that interested him.
How does a company like Novus guarantee repairs on star breaks like this?
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A Novus guy I spoke to said that he could repair any chip or break in the windshield as long as it had not already cracked.
Reminds me .. years ago I was competing in a rally, and we stopped at a meal break point. Just as we were walking past another competitor's car, the windscreen imploded into a million bits. The reason was assumed to be body flex during the event had stressed the glass.
Assuming there wasn't enough speed for the air molecules to produce the heat needed to crack the glass, I'd put my money on another object, one with greater mass than air.
When your first books were Motor Manuals, Audel Guides, Popular Mechanics and the Encyclopedia Britannia, and you watch Discovery Channel and The History Channel a lot...
And when you run into experts in other fields in your wanderings through life, ask them intelligent questions and remember the answers, you tend to pick up and store away a whole lot of useful minutiae - and just as much (if not more) worthless minutiae.
The trick is in telling the difference between useful and useless, and converting the latter to the former at the opportune moment.
They've done several specials on making Safety, Float and Curved glass over the years. One I recall was a "New Yankee Workshop" where they made curved glass to fit a curved cabinet. Big kiln with a sand floor, you scrape it out to the contour you want and the sheet glass slumps into it. Another one showed making Curved Bullet-Resistant car windshields and side windows - same basic process, more and much thicker glass.
Oh. And with my older brother running a PPG Auto Glass warehouse for several years, I just might have picked up a little bit of glass wisdom from him, too...
If there was enough stress in the glass to make a star crack run, it would have done it by the time you take the car in for the repair. You get a little crack, and then you forget and park it in the sun and Z-i-i-i-i-p! You come back to a two-piece windshield. Or you forget and wash the car and spray an ice-cold garden hose on a hot windshield
- Z-i-i-i-i-i-i-p! there goes the crack...
If you want to "tickle the dragon" (my term) on a chip or crack when it's near the edge, you can take an ice cube on a hot windshield and try to make the crack run in a U and back off the edge again. If both ends of the crack are run off the edge, the crack won't go across the "drivers visual field" and require replacement. But collected wisdom says some days it might cooperate, and on others it might not...
"sharx35" wrote in news:qgJ%g.71699$E67.50714@clgrps13:
No, and that was the point. I figured if I was able to keep the crack from invading the driver's field of vision, we might be able to put off replacing the glass for a while.
LOL! Substitute Popular Science and World Book Encyclopedia, and we have the same reading and viewing preferences. I also like "Made in America" on the Travel Channel, hosted by John Ratzenberger.
I try to do the same thing, keeping in mind what a high school teacher's advice that if one wants to be come old and wise, to learn something new every day, otherwise, one will just become old.
You got that right!
I'll have to remember that trick. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge!
Had a miniscule chip on a windshield for a couple of years then had the defroster running hard driving home in a snow storm. Pow! Just cracked in all directions.
We once owned a Honda Accord Hatchback that had been t-boned. The car was a total wreck, but my wife drove it home anyway.
The car sat in our garage for several days, then one day out of nowhere, a window exploded into little balls of glass. I have to assume that the car was bent and twisted so badly that the glass finally let go. The temp. on the day the glass exploded was steady at about 100F, and folding the glass around the B-pillar in the heat, I am sure, played a role. The point is, nothing had happened to the glass that day ...
Impacts that cause cracks can make the crack right now, or days later.
Bound to get flamed for this one but clear fingernail polish seems to do pretty good at stopping or at least slowing a crack in a windshield. Temporrarlely of course.
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