I got a great deal on a used car from a family friend. Unfortunatly, I am a little too tall for it and have trouble seeing under the ceiling. I can’t see stoplights if I am within 20 feet of them. How much would it cost to make the windshield bigger so I don’t start racking up tickets? I just need the glass to go up an extra foot or so.
I don’t think what you are asking is possible. You’d compromise the safety of the car and no shop would do the work.
Trade the good deal car for one that fits you.
Could you lower the seat?
Just how tall are you? As others have noted, there is no way to extend the windshield up a foot (or even a few inches) in a way that is safe, legal and cost effective. If you are really tall (like over 6’6" or more), you will have trouble getting enough headroom unless you get a pickup truck, van or full-sized SUV.
The windshield and A pillars are an integral part of your vehicle’s safety rating. The windshield can provide up to 30% of the protection in a front end collision, and 70% of the strength in a roll-over accident.
This is why the police will give you a ticket for a cracked windshield even if the crack is not blocking the view of the driver. Your vehicle is unsafe with a cracked windshield.
You do not want to alter either the windshield or the pillars that support it. Buy a vehicle that suits you as it is.
Yeah, it would be cheaper and easier to replace the driver’s seat with one that was lower to the floor.
Back in the crazy 1950’s many cars had visors (outside, metal) attached. This created a condition such as you are faced with. To let you check the red light changing, somebody invented a plastic prisim which was mounted on the dash at the bottom of the windshield. You might get the same effect by placing a small round mirror on the dash, as far forward as possible. These are parabolic and meant to be stuck onto your outside mirror to shoe blind spots.
Here’s one:
Lower the seat and/or lean it back. My husband is 6’3" and must drive at just over a 45〫angle in our Corvette.
It’s not just you or your car. I am of average height (6’) and drive two cars with windshields that could be used to house fair-size medical marijuana plantings. However, many intersections up here in colonial country are so small that if you stop anywhere near the limit line, the lights are barely visible under the top edge of the glass. Unless I have room to stop a half-carlength back, or remember to, I often have to keep leaning forward and peering up at some light whose fresnel cone doesn’t quite reach my position. It’s one of the bigger PITAs of driving on roads created for oxen teams 250 years ago.
Get a convertible.
You really can’t change that structure. Maybe add a sunroof, but I am not sure this is actually legal. It is here where I live…
Chop the top and make it a convertible. Or add a sunroof that you can poke your head out of.
I have seen limousines with a roof replaced with a fibreglass structure that raises the height.
Everyone has the concern that the windscreen must be a structurally solid item…
which is true. It just means you’d be paying to have a custom windscreen and a custom fibreglass structure to be fabricated and added in.
You must be able to sell your vehicle and move to a different style.
I should add that I am 6’1" and have driven over half a million miles in my lifetime. Headroom and visibility are sometimes a minor issue for anyone several inches over average height but I have never driven a modern car that I couldn’t get used to and work with just by adjusting the seat to the lowest position that is also pushed back all the way. Adjust your mirrors correctly too.That takes care of the problem for the vast majority of people. Almost all modern cars are passable to drivers in the 6’1" - 6’3" range even if it isn’t ideal. If you are taller than that, you really need to get a Ford F-150 or similar pickup truck or a large SUV. I have had friends and coworkers all the way up to 6’10" and those vehicles suited them just fine because they have excess headroom.
Oh, just another foot!
Lots of custom cars and hot rods are “chopped,” meaning the roof is basically lowered, the opposite of what you are looking for. That said…
This is a MASSIVELY labor-intensive process that would cost an absolute fortune. Remember that you would need to somehow come up with a windshield that fit the exact curves of the car, but was much higher…where are you going to source something like that? You would also have to replace the side and rear glass…re-engineer the doors to still open and close and for the windows to go up and down properly…make the interior look presentable somehow…all the metalwork and bodywork and paint. In the days when cars had mostly flat glass, this wasn’t as complex. I’m guessing that doing this properly on a modern automobile would cost as much as a new high-end luxury car.
And raising a roof by a whole FOOT on a normal car, even if it were affordable, would result in a really, really strange looking monstrosity of a car. You can look at lowering the seat if there’s space to be gained there, but if that doesn’t work, sell the car and buy something you fit in.
I’m guessing he’s imagining cutting the windshield hole larger, so the doors and the other windows wouldn’t be affected. It’s still probably more than a newer, better car would cost.
Unless you’re a cartoon character. Then you just whip a chain saw out of your pocket, cut the hole, stretch the glass, and you’re golden.
For around a hundred bucks you could buy a back-up camera and monitor and point the camera forward.
