Tour Bus WSR

[candyman]

Good morning! Iam doing my first tour buses this week. I emailed Korey and he stated that the B300 bridge will work fine for the repairs. For those with more experience I have a question. Is there anything special I should know or look for prior to or duing the repair. I've got over 2 years of WSR under my belt. I've repaired truck tractor WS and a RV. I saw a clip showing Korey mounting a bridge on a large RV. I have both thick and thin pit resins. The temp here at the moment is near 100 everyday , so I plan to do the WSR early in the morning. Its 3am at the moment and the temp is already 80 dgs. Any suggestions. Thanks! Candyman NOTE: one of the buses is a new 2011 mercedes. It has a small break and also a long crack. I recommended he replace the WS with the long crack. He was told by his regular replacement shop that his bus would need to go to a more modern shop because the WS has to be installed by a computerized system to continue the warranty on the bus. That sounds like big $$$ to get it replaced. The owner has a fleet of about 10 tour buses, only 2 are mercedes.

[screenman]

I cannot comment on the heat as we get nothing like that over hear. Glass is glass no need to be nervous, just be confident in your skills. If drilling and popping then you may have to drill slightly deeper than normal before you pop, as the glass will be slightly thicker than you may be used to.

Check for moisture as buses tend to get washed regularly.

How long was the crack?

[candyman]

Long crack over 14 inches near the center of the WS. I hadn't thought about the fact that the glass would be much thicker. Thanks for that reminder. I plan to do most of the buses early Friday morning. Some have combination, star & bullseye and I know one has a bullseye with a halo (angel wing). Some of these are more than a few weeks old per owner. He said he has a quick trip turn around on some buses and dont have the time to get them into a shop for repairs. Have a good week.

[Brent Deines]

I used to do a lot of tour buses and some high end personal coaches like http://www.marathoncoach.com/. Talk about a picky customer! One in particular stands out to me because The owner would call me every month or so after returning from his regular tours on the Alaska highway, which still had long sections of gravel at the time. There were always several chips and the windshield was very expensive so we charged a premium price for the repairs but it still saved him a great deal of money over the years. I did do some crack repairs on it as well but only because the owner was adamant he did not want to replace the windshield until absolutely necessary. If I remember correctly I had done 20+ repairs in the same windshield before he finally got hit by a rock that cracked out the windshield before he could get it back to me.

When it came time for replacement he ordered the windshield himself from the manufacturer http://www.mantruckandbus.co.uk/en/BusCoach/Coaches.jsp in Germany. He paid $2000 for the glass not including the labor I charged for installing it. The glass was 9' long and and around 5' tall. No insurance on this one so it was all out of the pocket and with no profit built into the job I was extremely nervous about installing it, but all went well and the customer continued to bring the coach in for rock chip repair after that.

But I digress. My point is that I agree with Screenman that repairing windshields like this are not all that difficult, but because the glass is vertical and thicker than traditional automobile glass you should probably leave a little additional time for the repair. Using a Delta Kits system you will have a slightly different bridge adjustment but other than that the repair process is virtually the same. However, I would highly recommend that you have the customer sign something absolving you from responsibility if the glass should crack out. It's one thing to buy a $200 car windshield and quite another to buy a $2000 coach windshield.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

[benswindshieldrepair]

I have been having great success with coaches lately. My area is a summer time tourist attraction and a lot of coaches and RV's come through. As Brent said, its the same deal as anything else but there are just some adjustments that need to be made. Brent will not like me saying this but I have found that drilling the impact point on these more vertical screens will greatly speed the process up. Good Luck!!!

[Brent Deines]

I don't know about "a great deal", but I do agree that on thicker vertical glass, drilling does speed up the process a bit. I still don't like drilling on an an expensive RV but I have to admit that on my truck fleets I would sometimes drill, especially if they needed to get the truck back on the road. I'm not against drilling, I just don't find it unnecessary in most cases and feel that cosmetically the completed repair quality suffers just a little.