did a chip on the inside part of windshield

[jasonsresin]

i had a first today. had a fj cruiser that a dealership said the windshield was $700 for so they wanted me to do all 5 stars in the windshield. well one was just a pit, so freebie... but after i drilled the first two i realized that the third one looked a little suspiscous. it wasnt on the outside of the glass at all, but was on the inside! i must have spent 4 or 5 minutes staring at it to be sure, scratching at the inside of it to confirm crack really was there, and deciding what to do, cause i had just given them two options. $95 flat to fix it, pay me to matter what. or $150 to fix it and even if a customer says "aah, i dont like it. replace it. i'll refund their money. two months later. whatever. Guaranteed. so i didnt want to lose the bulk of todays money. so anyway i go inside to the dealer, explain with two small books how glass has two layers and why this is strange and that i had never done anything like this before, but that i had a theory it could work. i said i would drill through the first layer, and thru the poly center, and half way into the inside glass. he said ok, cause it was no risk for him. i do that, drill 3x as deep as i ever had before (except for any mistakes i made as a rookie, lol) and setup my injector. low and behold, it came out half decent. pretty much how i pictured it in my head coming out. we'll see if everything is cosher and if it saves them a very expensive windshield and if i get to keep my money for it. i just thought i would share my experience and see if you guys have ever done anything like that before. i can honestly say i was so full of myself once i was done. im a repair snob already, and this didnt help much.

[Dave M]

Oh my God, that was a good one! I just picked myself off the floor. Brent, you've got to move that to the break room!

[jasonsresin]

yup. honest story. first time i've seen one, never even heard of one before. i have cracked a windshield from the inside before in our old grand am. threw a cell phone out of anger. but i shattered that windshield. it wasnt a star like this one. anyways it didnt come out half bad at all. i took pictures and videos like a madman to document it, in case it was a one of a kind thing, but i figured there would be one or two guys here that have been in the trade for a while that ran into one. strangest video i took was me putting a curing strip on the inside of the windshield. lol. i hope you were laughing at the story, and not at this crazy guy whose only been on the forums 4 months now. oh well, either way its a good story. maybe the guy had a dump truck run through the inside of his car and flipped up a rock on his way out!

[Sneck]

That is a good story.

I'm quite positive that breaks on the inside of the windshield are normally not repaired. When I first started out years ago, I had a repair job similar to what you described, but what I did is I set up as you normally would but I set up on the inside so working completely upside down was very awkward. Anyway, to keep the resin from running backwards up the injector, I put the resin in the tip of the injector and worked really fast into the pressure mode to get the resin going in the right direction. I completed the repair as you normally would and it turned out perfect.

That was the first and last time I ever tried anything like that, and if I ever found myself in a similar situation, I would turn the job down today because it is generally accepted that windshield repair is not to be done on the inside.

I'm glad it worked out for you though.

Sneck

[sunshine wr]

you're joking. I hope

[jasonsresin]

i almost considering trying it from the inside but my injectors just would not support that. plus with a nice car like that at a nice dealer, i didnt want to ruin their dash. i did tape it up nice cause i knew some resin would be seeping out of the entry point, which was on the inside of the glass.

say, did you ever figure out how the star got on the inside of the windshield you did. i mean, did you go out to a guys house and he tell you the story, or did you go to a dealer and they didnt know how the heck it was done. next time dont turn the job down. tape up the dash, drill 3x deeper than you should, and let the resin fill the break while you've got the injector on the outside of the glass. who am i kidding, im sure this only ever happens to 1 in every 10 techs, ever in their career. there wont be a next time.

[Dave M]

Oops! My bad! I meant to say the Water Cooler not the Break Room. I was thinking of another forum. Remember, the water cooler is where we post anything not to do with repair, like jokes, strange stories.....or maying REPAIRS that should NOT be done!!

[GlassStarz]

Uh ok

[jasonsresin]

"maying repairs that should not be done"?

first, what does that even mean. second, why would you say a repair shouldnt be done. i was the one in the situation where i had to decide so that was for me to do so. i am certainly not in a position to turn down a $150 job that i had just booked. i actually walked in there to tell him i couldnt do it, got talking to my wife on the cell on the way, and somehow decided that a chance at $150 was a fine way to fill the next hour. i say chance because i promised to guarantee customer satisfaction through the sale.

oh well, i guess i posted the story to get peoples comments. i suppose you're entitled to yours too. videos are on youtube if anyone wants to search strange windshield repairs. i took the videos and a few pics with the thought to share later with this fine community in mind. however i think its rude to start your comments off saying you're laughing out loud at my story (in a rude way) followed by saying i should have posted the story somewhere for jokes or non-windshield related matter. i still am not even sure where you're coming from. either you dont believe my story (which is wierd i know) or you're just plain being rude about it. either way is not cool.

[Sneck]

The only inside break that I did was back when I was new to the business in about 1992 or so. It was a standard star break that was hit on the outside which caused a small amount of repairable damage, but at the same time it produced a star break on the inside. It was an older pick-up and I told the customer that they need to have it replaced. The customer said "Are you sure there isn't anything you can do? It's just an old truck." I told him it would be an experiment with no guarantees. Now keep in mind I did not feel comfortable doing this, but being new at the time I guess I felt like I was doing this customer a favor since he was obviously not going to replace the windshield.

With the exception of that one and only inside repair I did early on, I don't attempt any inside repairs because I believe I read that they should not be done, and i'm pretty sure it was in an official windshield repair guideline put out by the NWRA (I think? ...) it was a long time ago, but I know I read it somewhere and since none of the equipment manufactures that i'm aware of make tooling for repairing inside breaks, there is a reason for it, so I don't do do it.

Sneck