<VV> I broke Geoff's Windshield!
Bill Hubbell
whubbell at cox.net
Sun Aug 13 22:52:53 EDT 2006
It was my fault.
My son, Geoff, and I were installing a new windshield in his 1965 Monza
Convertible today. The car had been previously stripped and repainted,
including the windshield channel, and all broken studs repaired, new trim
clips installed . The trim had been cleaned. Everything was in good
condition. - all rust had been repaired without changing the windshield
opening in any way.
It was late this afternoon, and we had been working on his car all day. We
were tired, but we could see the end in sight, so we were enthused.
However, we made our first (and most important) mistake here - we did not do
a "dry run" rehearsal, but instead went right to installation. I installed
the new spacer blocks that came with the 3M kit, and then I applied the
ribbon sealer. We carefully put the glass on the trunk lid (back side up)
and cleaned the edges, then lifted the glass up, aligned it horizontally by
sight and vertically by the spacer blocks, then pressed it on. We noticed
that the top of the glass was closer to the edge of the opening than the
rest of the windshield, but we figured we could not do anything about that
now.
So, it was a success, right? Wrong! We could not get the top trim to
install. It seemed the windshield was too close to the top, or maybe too
far "out". We worked at it for awhile, and then I suggested we quit for
awhile and go do something else. Geoff, unfortunately, tried again (Mistake
#2 - didn't quit when we were frustrated) and this time he got the right
upper corner to snap into place. So I dropped what I was doing and came
around to "help" him.
I reasoned that if maybe I pushed the windshield down a bit while he put
pressure on the trim the clips would snap into place. This was mistake #3 -
the BIG one. I used a screwdriver and gently pried on the center top edge
of the windshield.
I snapped the windshield.
FOUR big full length cracks right down the middle of the glass.
Ouch.
I wasn't happy, let's just leave it at that. Geoff will recover. He
returns to medical school tomorrow and will probably hear worse things in
Pathology class. Still.......
Anyway, I need a new windshield. I will order it and pay the price of my
transgression.
I feel really bad about this (I hope you can tell), and I DON'T want to do
it again, so I am hoping you all can tell me what I need to do to install
the next one so the trim will fit correctly and I won't break another one.
OK, so I now know not to pry on glass (no, they don't teach that in Medical
School!!!)
Thanks for whatever help you can give me.
Sheepishly,
Bill Hubbell
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