Put it in a 9 foot 11.75 inch car…whoops :smack:
The story…
My parents have been fighting this bizarre smell in their basement. They’ve been dealing with it on and off for over a year, but due to other set backs, it’s been put on the back burner (setbacks being 17 inches of raw sewage in the basement…twice). Anyways, in the past two weeks they mentioned that their sump pump has been cycling and it hasn’t rained at all lately. My mom also pointed out that there was a big puddle under the bushes where the sump pump drains (about 8 feet away from the house. We went to look at it and even from 15 feet away we could smell the stagnant water from the puddle. A theory we have (for lack of a better theory) is that the water in the puddle is just going around in circles. Down to the pump (where the smell permeates into the basement), up to the puddle, down to the pump, up to the puddle. Also, they have a HUGE gopher/mole/vole problem so there are plenty of tunnels under there for the water to travel around in. Anyways, I looked around the house for a chunk of pipe or gutter or something to extend the sump pump outlet a few more feet past the puddle to test this and couldn’t find anything. Off to home depot I went. They had a 10’ piece. I wasn’t sure if it would fit. It seemed waaay to long to fit in my little Insight, but I thought it that was the case I would just hang it out the front window, it’s a short drive. I loaded it in the back, rested it on the dash and it seemed okay. Closed the hatch carefully, one click…okay, I can tell the hatch is touching the pipe…give it a gentle tap with my hip to shut it the rest of the way and I’m golden. Go around to the front, hop in the driver seat and find it cracked the windshield. Well, that ruined my day.
Called the insurance agent, they don’t waive the deductible on broken windshields (I know some companies do), and the Safelite website is quoting me around $400+ to have it replaced (my deductible is $500 on comprehensive so I’m not claiming it). I’ll call a few more junkyards tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath, it’s a 2010 Insight and I doubt there’s a lot of totaled ones laying around.
Also, I have an XM antenna mounted to the inside of it. Hopefully if I go with Safelite, they’ll have experience with removing and remounting various things from windshields. The antenna came with the adhesive strips already applied and I really don’t want to have to buy a new one.
I’m pretty sure Safelite techs can transplant pretty much anything from one windshield to another with no problems. I wouldn’t really want to mess with trying to find glass from a junker - the repair tech then has to spend time ($$) on removing the old adhesive so they can install it on your car, and since they’re not working with “virgin” glass, they probably will not offer any guarantee against leaks.
The $400 question though - did the pipe at least fix the flooding problem?
Just asked mom, the basement still smells, but assuming the longer pipe stopped the cycle, the gross stagnant water is probably still siting in the crock. I’m stopping over there later today, I’ll flush it out when get there.
I’d get a second opinion about using a junkyard windshield. In my limited experience, they get scratched up, and damaged when they are removed with the result that they don’t last that long. The one used windshield that I got cost almost as much after installation as a new one, and it became a scratched up delaminated mess over the next year or two.
It’s too late now, but why didn’t you lay the pipe diagonally in the car? You could even have opened the passenger window and left a bit of it sticking out the window.
That was the plan if it was too long, but I didn’t think it was too long, I though it was just right. As I said in the OP, I closed the hatch carefully and the the latch clicked once, so I thought everything was fine when I pushed it the rest of the way. I didn’t feel any back pressure or anything. I certainly didn’t slam or force anything.
Spend the money for a new windshield installed by professionals. A windshield in integral to the structure and safety of the passenger compartment. What money you think you might save on second-hand more often than not will kill you in even a minor accident.
I’m planning to get a new windshield, but could I get a cite that more often then not a second hand windshield will kill you in a minor accident? I’ve never heard that and being that there’s a huge market for them I’m kind of surprised that they’re so dangerous.
I called a national company to get a quote and in telling them what happened the CSR not only laughed at me but then went on to say “Just so you know we do record all these conversations…so everyone else can laugh at you too!” (I’m not kidding, those were her exact words). I sent off an email complaint. They said they would look into it, so I’m just giving it a day to see if anything comes of it. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was a bit embarrassing and ridiculously unprofessional and if they’ll knock off a few bucks I’ll take it. As much as I don’t really like the thought of them all sitting around listening to the tapes, I kind of hope they do actually record all the phone calls. It was bizarre the way she didn’t stop giggling at me the whole time and then made that comment. Anyways, I’m hoping to get it done this Friday or Monday.
The next thing I have to decide is if I’m going to have them come to my work or if I want to drive out to their place and sit there for two hours.
An anecdote about secondhand windshields; I was a passenger in a 2 vehicle crash where we rear-ended a semi, hitting the T bar at ~ 70 mph in a late 80’s Subaru. The driver went into the windshield despite the seat belt (no airbag) at the same time the windshield went into a million pieces. It should have had a film on it but it didn’t, the owner never knew it either. She’d bought it when it was a year old, apparently like-new.
The driver had very bloody initial scalp injuries and a vacuum was used to get the chunks out of his hair so his scalp could be sewn up. Several pieces were removed form his eyebrows and eyelid, too. For the rest of the years that I knew him he was picking shards of glass out of his scalp and face as they came to the surface; they were so small many had healed over where he just thought they were scratches.
It seems to me that would have happened in a similar accident if the windshield was in the original car. If it wasn’t laminated in your friends car, it wouldn’t have been laminated in the original car either. The ‘film’ goes between two sheets of glass. It’s the reason the 10 foot pipe I put in my car made that spiderweb instead of breaking the window like a regular window pane in a house or shattering it like tempered glass.
It’s not that (to the best of my knowledge) a junkyard can get a totaled Subaru, separated the glass into two pieces and install two un-laminated pieces in two different cars.
IOW, someone had that shitty glass to begin with. The the problem wasn’t a result of it being moved from one car to another.
