<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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