Starbreak

[Onsite]

Have any of you ever seen a starbreak that once it was repaired you could not see it on the outside but you could see it from inside of the car?

[GlassStarz]

Its an optical thing looking into a darker area somethings are not as visible looking out into the light you see em

[tooldini]

that is correct pretty normal thing.

Jeff

[SGT]

Light refraction is not as noticable viewing from the exterior as it passes through the outer glass as is from viewing inside the vehicle as light passes throught the outer, PVB and inner glass. I am not an expert in refraction so I will let the scientists educate us there!

Depending on the resin, leg break angles, leg diameter, how well the break was filled and for "Screenman", moisture removal factors in to the outcome.

As long as it was completely filled this is sometimes unavoidable and just part of what we do...REPAIR, NOT MANUFACTURE. Sometimes it can be real hard to explain why it is so hard to see from the outside and from inside it is more visible you have a very paticular customer.

[StarQuest]

Yes, I see this happening much to often these days.

With 1-4 day new breaks I seldom experience this effect at all. On older windshield damage I see it happening more commonly.

From what I've found when damage has already been pre-contaminated with either car wash additives treatments or silicone applied Rain-X, cosmetic results will always suffer. No resins that I've worked with so far are exempt from this happening. How could they be with so many new car wash chemical additives being introduced every year.

I've done many repairs on both my practice shields and my own vehicles and never experienced this problem when damage was clean or non-contaminated.

However, when I've applied Rain-X or other car wash added waxes to practice shields I do see this problem.

Many of you went through repair training, working on brand new windshields with clean breaks, did you ever see this from inside of shield? I never did!

Resins are tested under controlled conditions which many times don't include Rain-X testing or any other used car wash additives. Not sure if they're required to perform these type of test. Someday they might have to!

That's why I always educate and provide chip savers, for GlasssStarz I'll call them "Contamination Savers"

I always tell my customers....the cleaner the damage, the better the cosmetics!!!

[mrchip]

yes contamination can present problems..yesterday i did a bullseye repair on a 1996 lincoln t/c..it was dirty..had to been there a long time..used x-phobic ...and it cleaned up pretty good....I was glad i had a chance to use it..

[SGT]

Originally Posted by StarQuest

Many of you went through repair training, working on brand new windshields with clean breaks, did you ever see this from inside of shield? I never did!

I have a different view on practice glass. Using practice glass in training does not provide for real world stress factors the windshield might be under which could be contributing to this problem. It is great for practicing skills but provides a false sense of what a real world repair may look like for someone just starting out.

You nailed it, the sooner you get to repair a break, the less time it has had to be contaminated the better the repair will be. In the real world that is just not the case most of the time though.

We all have to remember that there are factors beyond current windshield repair technology and technician skill that we just cannot control just adversly affect repair appearance.

[Onsite]

Good points Thanks everyone!

Is anyone else using the x-phobic to clean out repairs?

[Mr Bill]

Mr Chip
How did you use the X-phobic?

[mrchip]

load into injector and mount break and inject..work it back and forth and remove injector...it will evaporate very quickly