Preventing A Simple Rock Chip In Your Windshield From Becoming A Major Repair

The car ahead of you on your drive home throws a rock up and onto your windshield. It creates a small chip in the glass, which is barely noticeable. If it's out of your field of vision, you may even forget that it's there. If you fail to get the rock chip repaired, you may find yourself replacing the entire windshield soon. Here is how a minor chip in the windshield can become a major problem and how to prevent that from happening.

Safety Glass Delays the Inevitable

Auto windshields were once made of glass that shattered when hit by an object. The glass splintered into sharp fragments that could damage the driver and passengers. Safety glass was developed to prevent these injuries.

Safety glass is made by creating a sandwich of two layers of glass between which is a transparent plastic film. When the glass breaks, the film holds the broken fragments in place, creating the typical spider-web design. The glass fragments will stay in place until the windshield is replaced.

Rock Chips and Stress

If a large object hits your windshield, the stress of the blow cracks the glass in a pattern that radiates out from the point of impact. When a small rock hits the windshield, the force is not enough to crack the glass. It breaks the surface of the glass on one side of the plastic film. This creates a stress point on the windshield.

As you drive, vibrations from the car add to the stress on the windshield. Temperature changes in the car cause the windshield glass to expand and contract, creating more stress. If the stress is sufficient, cracks will appear in the windshield that radiate outward from the rock chip. The cracks can happen quickly. Over night, one or more cracks can start at the rock chip and make their way across the entire windshield. You no longer have a simple rock chip repair and are looking at a windshield replacement.

Rock Chip Repair Prevents the Cracks

Get your car to a business that does auto glass repair in your area, such as Becky's Glass Works, as soon as you can after a rock chip happens. If you can't get there quickly, place a piece of heavy tape over the chip and onto the surrounding windshield glass. This will take some of the stress off of the glass and may prevent a crack from starting.

The chip repair consists of filling in the hole with a transparent resin. This bonds the edges of the cracked glass together and to the plastic film reducing the stress on the glass and preventing a crack from forming at the chip. The resin is polished to be as clear as the surrounding glass so it is often hard to detect the repair.

Rock chip repair facilities will do this work as you wait, so you can have the chip repaired on your way to work or back home. Once the chip is repaired, then you're safe from having to deal with a future windshield replacement.