Grrrr I hate non car people doing car work.

So at last weekends vintage race the windshield on my Datsun 1200 got chipped and of course the crack grew, no worries big national chain had windshield in stock. I explained it was a vintage race car and that the rubbers were difficult to obtain so the beat one would have to do but that the vehicle had windshield clips that hold it in place. Tech shows up takes one look and asks where the new weatherstrip is, I explain there isn't one and that the present one was glued in and that the clips hold it down. So the tech (now named dufus in my mind) proceeds to lecture about how the windshield provides 30% of the structural rigidity, to which I reply that in new car yes that us true but NOT on a 43 year old Datsun. He counters with he's been doing this for 11 years and while it does have a roll cage "if that windshield lets go the apocalypse will be unleashed etc." Yeaaaaaa right a cage that was built to SCCA rally spec is going to be unsafe in a roll over without that windshield weather strip being 100%. So the guy calls the office the boss calls and says the wont do the job due to the liability........fair enough I can respect that. Naturally I am irritated that I am now scrambling to get the issue resolved but what really irritated me most was a guy who works on cars A. thought 11 years made him an expert (I'm sure he does a good job on what he knows) and B. when confronted with something outside the normal realm refused to believe things outside this realm could exist. After the guy left I told the wife I don't expect anyone to know old cars that well but surely he'd done one or two older cars in the past. This one rivals the parts store person who told me that strut inserts do not existing as the are complete unit.......as they have never seen an insert they didn't exist.........these jobs don't pay well so I try not to expect a high level of knowlege but man I hate non car people in automotive businesses........OK rant over.

 Tom

Key word...liability.

TRoglodyte wrote: Key word...stupidity.

fixed that for you

This may be a dumb question, but if its held in with clips why can't you unclip it and pop the new on in without the need for the glass guy?

Food for thought - the OP went to a chain set up to solve the problems of 90% of the car buying public, but fell into the remaining 10% that they don't care about and thus are not set up to deal with and more importantly aren't interested in dealing with at all.

The outcome doesn't surprise me, but of course it is annoying after trying to explain to whoever is on the phone and probably wasn't taking notes what the deal was.

asoduk wrote: This may be a dumb question, but if its held in with clips why can't you unclip it and pop the new on in without the need for the glass guy?

I think this is a good question. If the 11 year dude has never installed a windshield in a rubber, the odds of you being able to do an equally good job are pretty darn good. Go find a length of 3/16 nylon rope and some window cleaner and go nuts.

Ugh, I hate idiots with the same job title as me.

I've been doing it for 13 years and I'm still learning stuff. I've don't plenty of older gasket set windshields but they do take more time and effort to get done. I'm assuming this is a national chain with stupid commercials and rhymes with "Unsafelite"? Most of those guys are paid per job, so the faster they rush through each one they make more money. No incentive to take the time to slow down and make sure it gets done right. I've met some good techs that work for for them but they are out numbered by the sub par techs unfortunately.

at any point, did you just ask how much it would cost just to buy the glass from them so they could be on their merry way?

Find a good local independent glass guy and use him instead. The national chains are the McDonald's of auto glass. I found the guy I use through a local car club. He handles the nicer dealers in town (audi,ferrari etc.) and also has years of experience with older cars.

For the benefit of those in central Florida look up Sander's Auto Glass

that is just it.. find a local, if he has a real shop, he should go out of his way to help you.

Years and years ago when I drove commercial, the windshield of the truck I was driving shattered in a strong thunderstorm (really fun at 65mph) and nobody would touch it except for one shop. Not only did they go a good job, but at a great price considering the size of the glass they replaced

@Lancer007 yes that would be it, I originally called Elite as they put the last one in and the guy had not issue with the fact that the weather strip wasn't what was holding the glass in place.....he even left me some adhesive. Elite was bought out I should have went with my gut and called the independents. I have since called two independents and they asked me to send them some pics, the nice young gal confirmed she got it and she said they'd ring me up Monday. I should also clarify the majority of the weatherstripping that covers/rides on the windshield ie rides on top of the glass is gone hence the guy thinking it would come out.......he didn't comprehend that gluing it down as the last guy did and the fact that the clips pin it down to the gasket under the glass. Now as for doing it myself well I tend to be impatient and haven't always been successful with windshields plus it was only going to cost me a few more bucks then ordering one up and doing it myself. I now have window out so I may well do it.

I'm still pissed at the goofs who gooped glue all over my 914 windshield / frame when it needed replaced (drunk road-rager jumped through it while I was stopped at a red-light, long story...) and that was 15 years ago and I no longer even own the car

Chances are there is a bulk seal somewhere that may work for you, you just might have to get creative at the corners. Steele Rubber has been really good to us in this respect.

Failing that pull the old seal and re-install the new glass with the old seal. Use urethane to fill in wherever the rubber isn't and you'll be fine.

I don't understand why some shops need to make things more difficult than they are.

plance1 wrote: (drunk road-rager jumped through it while I was stopped at a red-light, long story...)

Damn!

I'm sure it was a CYA situation for them. I was planning on having the rear windows in my rabbit hatchback popped out to make it easier to install my headliner. I went to a local glass shop but then they told me it was going to cost like $100 per window and they immediately stated that they could break them and they would not be held liable for that if it happened. Seriously? That's basically saying that you can't guarantee your work. I said screw it and put in the headliner without removing the windows.

In reply to Contradiction:

That is absolutely true. Depending on the car, some are no problem and some are impossible. There's no way anyone can honestly guarantee the parts won't break coming out. Parts aren't designed or intended to come out in one piece. I've done it many, many time successfully but I've always made the possibility of the part breaking perfectly clear to the owner.

Lancer007 wrote: In reply to Contradiction: That is absolutely true. Depending on the car, some are no problem and some are impossible. There's no way anyone can honestly guarantee the parts won't break coming out. Parts aren't designed or intended to come out in one piece. I've done it many, many time successfully but I've always made the possibility of the part breaking perfectly clear to the owner.

Thanks. That gives me a better understanding at least. I guess the bottom line for me was she immediately made it sound like it was going to be a problem or just didn't want to do the work. If she had taken on a different attitude I might have been more willing to give them my business.

The guy form a big chain was putting the windshield in my tundra, the truck is kinda tall and this guy wasn't, I offered to help which he declined, and probably would have been an insurance thing if I had. As he leaned across the truck his ladder slipped and be broke the new windshield on my fender. Of course they knew they were on the okk for fixing the fender and we had to wait for another guy to bring out another windshield. Second guy shows up the complete the job tell me they will contact me about fixing the fender in about a week. About 2 weeks later i called to follow up about getting my fender repaired and they office had no idea what was talking about. It didn't take much convincing for the office to work out repairs but apparently this guy thought I'd forget and he wouldn't have to explain the second windshield he used. I gut that it very much is a specialty thing but like so many other jobs people get trained to work within a very small window of reality, they moment they get a curveball it's game over

I'm not at all surprised that a big national chain would decline to replace the windscreen in a Datsun 1200 race car, especially reusing the old gasket.

I'm absolutely shocked that they would have the glass in the first place.

I had the windshield replaced in my '01 Miata back in '03 only to find out that it was simply laying in place. It was not fastened in any way and when you hit a bump it almost fell out. Long story short I had a difficult time getting the well known national chain to admit they made an error and fix it.

bludroptop; I was expecting that some places wouldn't want to,do the job, the big chain wasn't the actual call I made but as the bought the company it's where I landed. I was also very up front about the job when I called, I'm not miffed at them, it's the dufus who tried to enlighten me. When the manager said they wouldn't take it on becuase of liabilty I was ok with that. As for having a winshield, 1200s were manufactured in a body style known as Ute/Bakkies (think ranchero) in various parts of the world until 2007. The body work from the B pillar forward is nearly identical including the windshield.....you can even get it from Rockauto.

The comment "So the tech (now named dufus in my mind) proceeds to lecture about how the windshield provides 30% of the structural rigidity" got me wondering, so I tried to find test results online confirming or disputing this. I found a test from Porsche where they did a chassis test for another lab. Here's their results:

Static Torsional Stiffness (support the chassis at the rear spring upper support locations and twist it at the front):

with glasS is 21620 Nm/deg, without glass: 15790 Nm/deg so the glass contributes 5830Nm/deg of stiffness, or about 27%, but this was taking into account both the windshield and the rear glass, so the windshield alone probably contributes about 13.5%.

Static Bending (support the car at the front and rear upper spring supports and push down at the front and rear seats):

with glass is 20450 N/mm, without glass is 17150N/mm, so in this case the glass contributes about 16% to the rigidity.

When looking at dynamic stiffness (shaker test), the torsional decreased from 60.6Hz to 49.1Hz when both the front and rear glass were removed, bending barely changed from 62.4Hz to 60.8Hz, and front lateral actually increased without the glass in place, going from 60.6 to 64.3.

The whole article can be found here.

They also tested some other components (bolt in rad support and the like) and found that monte carlo bars (strut tower brace that ties into the firewall) increased static torsional stiffness 6.3% in this chassis.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I thought someone might find this interesting.

Great info, thanks!

Schmidlap not really tangent; the guys numbers may not have been exact but he was correct in that modern cars use the glass as a significant part of the structure. Whereas ye olde Datsun not so much............my cage is tied into the A-pillar which further negates the tech's assertion. Newer cars have so much more thought put into thier engineering, high tech on my old car is the collapsible steering column and the motor stoving under the car.......but things like the chassis designed to send the impact load down the sides of the car and around the passenger compartment were likely not even envisioned in 1972 Datsuns, Volvo Mercedes maybe..........not these paper thin Datsuns. I wasnt even going to tell the tech that the windshield he had on his truck would be 2-3mm thinner than the orginal but the weather strips are all done from molds for the thicker OEM glass so even with a brand new gasket the windshield isn't going to meet standard. On the plus side I found a local place; Elmer (thier tech who does some kind of racing) is stopping by the house to take some measurements as they think they can come up with OEM style gasket material, they have a windshield on order and plan to install it Saturday. Also even as a semi custom job it's going to be much cheaper.

 Tom

I am on a first name basis with many of the local merchants,including the auto glass man. They get my money whenever possible.