Infected Windscreen

[Waspy]

A guy asked me to look at the damage on his 10 year old car, to see if I could fix it. I was astounded at what I saw. It looked like a fully repaired practice screen after 200 repairs had been done. Each mark was a perfect circle about 1-2mm in diameter, slightly grey like a filled pit, and definitely not on the outer or inner surface. He reckoned it started with a few in his line of sight 3yrs ago and has now spread all over the screen. I told him it was new to me, probably a rash, and a replacement was the only answer. Whatever it was, it was definitely happening down at the PVB layer. Anyone seen anything similar

[Lee]

Your right about replacement. The w/s is delaminating. We have seen this on a handful of w/s's including some of the premium brands. This may be caused by the glass being removed from the autoclave too soon. Also be very leery about repairing heated w/s's on late 80's early 90's Fords. These have severe delamination problems and are very dangerous as the whole w/s separates and is like two pieces of raw glass.

[screenman]

I saw this often in the early 90s but not recently. It is a fault in the manufacturing process and is not repairable. I have seen these bubbles as big as 12 inches across, but mostly they are as you describe.

I seem to remember it being on mostly Peugeots.

I have not come across a problem with older Fords maybe they used different glass suppliers in the UK.

[gold star wsr]

in 1985 we had to replace the windshield of our 1984 Oldsmobile. A few years ago little "bubbles" started appearing mainly around the edges, but now have spread. Most of the windshield is involved... it's like driving through rain all the time...every noticable after dark. We aren't sure yet how long we'll keep this car, so have put off replacement... since hubby only drives it to work, and he is retiring in January.

[sydfloyd44]

I just wanted to pipe in on Lees comment regarding the Ford heated windshields and being cautious of repairing them.
To elaborate: DON"T!!!

This link is for the bulletin from Ford.

http://www.glasslinks.com/tips/repheat.htm

Just for note, these windshield are really starting to go away. As they need replaced, the vehicle has to go to a Ford dealer to have the entire heating (w/s) system REMOVED from the vehicle before the non-heated windshield can be installed. They haven't made the heated windshield for these vehicles in a long, long time!