On my way home from work today, an errant rock slammed into my windshield on the freeway. Now I have a decent sized chip in my windshield and I'm looking to repair it. Anyone have any experience with any of the chip repair kits out there? Any input would greatly be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
If you're not looking to add this to your arsenal of profit I would get a pro to do it for you. If you have insurance there's a good chance you won't have to pay deductible at all. There is good profit in it though as a side biz on top of detailing. I can pm you more if interested. Otc kits don't work nearly as well and will probably waste your money.
If you are asking about the cheap over the counter kits, I've used them a lot. My first results were hit and miss. So I started going with the pros, even though my insurance no longer covers them. After a questionable job from one and a disastrous job from another I went back to the $10 kits. The disastrous job was on my 73 Z (with factory windshield) www.240z.me That guy didn't use a pump or anything, he just put the outside part on and filled it with the resin and heated the glass from the inside. The problem was after he took it off and left the resin didn't fill the crack and it looked about as bad as before, but with some resin blocking things. When he left it looked great at first so I went back to work and didn't see it was bad till time to go home. So I took my dremel with a tiny carbide bit and drilled down the middle of his patch and attached the home kit on it. Set the plunger in suction mode and gently heated the windshield from the inside, trying to move out from the crack and only heat it slowly. I could see the heat driving tiny bubbles out of the glass through the resin. Then I put the plunger in as directed and left it over night to cool completely. (didn't seem to hurt anything leaving it that long) The next morning I put their little plastic piece over the area, after removing the plunger setup, to level the outside with some resin under it. And the botched repair completely disappeared except for a bit at the center. The combo of the really weak plunger and some carefully applied heat seems to do the trick once it is opened up with the super tiny drill bit, Now I do them all myself with the same steps. It is tricky getting the base attached to the windshield with the two sided tape as if you push too hard the crack will spread, not hard enough and it will separate when pushing the resin in. I probably wouldn't try it on an expensive windshield or a crack real close to the edge but all my cars run about 150-200 for a windshield or 60-90 for a pro repair. And the repair places that I talked to don't guarantee that the glass won't crack while they are doing it and have on their paperwork that the repairs sometimes don't turn out great anyways.
