Recently on an extremely cold Kansas morning - right around zero - my windshield cracked right up the middle in front of the defroster. The crack formed a "T" almost perfectly aligned with the defroster. That baby puts out heat like a blast furnace. Has anyone ever heard of this happening on other Jeeps or did I just have a bad day?
99 wrangler windshield cracked
Jan 07, 2004
5 Replies
Twice on my 01TJ
Kennita Tully wrote:
Dunno about a Jeep, but I had it happen to a '66 Impala Caprice one cold night in Utah after having used the defroster on a long drive. Insurance company said the original window probably had prior stress in it, but they noted it wasn't that rare a happening.
I watched it happen on my XJ once. I had a rock chip and got in and blasted my defrost. It was just too much for the windshield. Now, I get rockchips filled (the people come by our office once a week or so), insurance covers it, and I also defrost a little more carefully.
Kennita Tully did pass the time by typing:
Now's probably the wrong time to say this....
When any vehicle is in sub freezing (single digit or lower) temps you shouldn't turn on the defrost without moving the temp to below mid-range. In the old truck I used to put a piece of cardboard over the defrosters so they couldn't directly hit the windshield.
In Montana, is pretty automatic to drop the temp both when initially starting, or to cooloff before shutting down. But in the Utah desert, this just wasn't expected.
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