Dealing With A Broken Window In Your Vehicle

A broken window in your car or truck can be a significant problem, and hiring an auto glass repair service to replace it needs to be a priority. The windshield in your vehicle stays intact when it breaks, but the remaining glass will break into many small pieces and leave you unable to secure the vehicle until the new glass is installed. 

Safety Glass

The glass in your car or truck is made from durable tempered safety glass, and breaking it is more challenging than you might think. The glass can break with a sudden impact, something sharp hitting it, or sudden changes in the temperature like cold water hitting hot window glass that has been in the sun all day.

Because the safety glass breaks into tiny pieces, it will often leave a lot of glass inside the door, so opening up the panel and cleaning out the glass out is essential. If the glass remains inside the door, it will rattle when you open and close the door, and the small pieces can interfere with the track and other moving parts, causing the window to jam. 

To replace the window glass on your vehicle, the auto glass repair technician will need to open the door panel, remove the hardware that retains the window glass, and remove the broken pieces from the track and brackets. Once the old window glass is out of the way, the new window can be installed from the top of the door and aligned with the support brackets and track. The tech can then replace the hardware to secure the new glass.

Most auto glass repair services can come to your home or workplace and replace the glass if you need them to, or you can call and schedule a time to drop the car off to have the repairs made. 

Stationary Glass

Stationary glass, like the rear window in your car or truck, is often easier to repair because it is retained with the seal around the glass opening. There are no moving parts to deal with, but the repair must still be done correctly. 

The auto glass repair tech will remove the seal around the window opening, and clean the surface so that a new seal can be installed with the new window. Like the moving glass in the doors, the stationary glass will break into many small pieces, so vacuuming out the car before returning it to the customer is typically part of replacing the glass. 

The new seal can be installed on the window opening, and then the new glass is put in place very quickly. Most stationary glass can be replaced from the outside of the car and does not even require removing trim panels inside the vehicle.