On my way home on the freeway, a kicked-up rock caused this six-inch crack (about a millimeter wide) in the lower left corner of my windshield (though I think it grew to that amount). There’s no “give” on either side of the windshield over the crack, and I don’t think I can feel it from the other side.
How important is it that it get fixed/replaced?
Depends on your state. Some states will consider that to be a substantial defect and the cops will issue you a citation for it if you don’t repair or replace the windshield. Other states don’t seem to care.
I’m not a glass expert, but I wouldn’t expect the crack to make your windshield explode or fall out, if that’s more to the point of your worry.
It probably won’t cause the glass to be substantially weaker, but it is a good idea to fix them. You can get a kit to fix cracks less that 10 or 12 inches, with varying results. You might want to try that in case you cannot afford a new windshield. Either way, keep an eye on it to see if it changes in size substantially.
There are glas repair kits that do a pretty good job of “sealing” or “fixing” small cracks, as has been mentioned. We had this done to a small crack in our windshield 4 or 5 years ago. The repair was practically invisible, and we had no problems with it.
The risk, I think, is that if left alone, the crack may widen…to the point where it can’t be easily fixed and the windshield will have to be replaced.
We had a similar thing happen, and the first crack was a similar size, but it was in the upper left side of the windscreen. Unfortunately as the days went by the crack lengthened, and lengthened, until we had to have the windscreen replaced or chuck the car. As the car was about 18 years old at that point and we were saving to buy a new one (second hand, but newer!) we called it quits and chucked the car about a year earlier than we were planning to, which put a crimp in our budget, but so would have replacing a windscreen…
Hope yours turns out fixable, but don’t leave it. Ours crept by the day.
Depending on your auto insurance, the fix may be covered by insurance.
I’d fix the chip, especially if you live in a place where you have to use the defroster in winter at all - my old car had a chip, and I didn’t get it fixed for a while, but once winter hit (and this was in TN, so relatively mild winter), and I had to use the defroster, I could see chip spreading into a crack - and getting longer on a regular basis. So eventually, the windshield had to be replaced at a much greater cost than the chip repair would have been.
I never used my insurance on a chip/crack; assured that the insurance company would raise my rate and recoup the money several times over.
A client of mine in the auto glass repair industry said they dont’ seal anything over 1/4 inch, so I’d always buy a new windshield (do shop around - prices vary widely). Since fate holds a new crack down the road for all of us, I’d always delay replacing it as long as possible, on the chance that that next rock might as well hit my already cracked windshield instead of one I’d just bought new.
I have used a couple of drops of SuperGlue with great results, especially on a small one like this. As stated before, it will continue to grow as the glass heats and cools in even moderate climes.
You can’t feel the crack on the other side because the glass is a sandwich, two layers of glass with plastic in the middle – the plastic keeps shards of glass together in an accident.
Replacing glass around here (cenral Jersey) costs around $300 or so, and they come by your house or place of business and do it right there.
When my windshield was cracked two months ago I tried to get insurance to pay for it and found that since my deductable was $500, insurance wasn’t going to pay a dime. Oh well.
Funny thing is that I had another windshield broken 20 years ago and the replacement cost was the same (around $300), in the same state, with the same insurance company, same deductable, etc. and they paid it in full without charging me a dime.