My daughter is going “bug bug” in the car so I try to hit the bug, hit the windshield with the heel of my hand, not even full force, boop, nice fracture like it was hit with a rock.
What’s up? Anyone ever do this before? I can’t be the only one. Bad luck, bad product, what?
There might have been a scratch on the glass too small to notice, but just enough to cause a weak spot in the windshield.
Wow, have you been bitten by radioactive spiders lately?
I once pulled into a campsite in the '74 Westphalia which was probably 25-30 years old at he time. Mrs. 74westy hopped out of the passenger seat and swung the door shut. This caused the door window to explode into a million tiny fragments.
Microscopic scratch was the best solution anyone came up with–speculative as it was.
I haven’t seen this in a long time…
Band name!
I was scraping ice off my windshield, and admittedly, I was doing a bit of a chipping action, when suddenly it burst into spiderweb.
And the dime drops. Username, explained.
My sister used to have a T Top Camaro. After about 8 years over ownership, the glass panels broke into a jillion pieces from the heating/thawing (chassis flexing?) cycles.
Some car models are infamous for windshields. Subaru has had a bunch of recalls.
I do that too. Unless you are using a hard chisel, that shouldn’t happen. The scrapers are typically plastic.
I was sitting in the drivers’ seat, trying to whack forward. Hard to do with a bug on a curved in glass, I knew I had a bad whack so it was maybe only even half speed at that, and it’s not like I reared back and was hitting it as hard as possible. I have tried to simulate that level of hit elsewhere and it doesn’t seem like this should happen. But it did.
So is it defective or do I just write it off as bad luck?
Could be either, hard to know. Could be accumulated invisible damage.
Was there any jewelry involved? If I swatted at a bug left-handed I know my wedding band would hit first and the shape of a ring is a phenomenal impact concentrator
No, the heel of the hand. Nothing sharp.
Some would say that the cracked windshield was karma for trying to smash a bug…
Bad karma.
My dad’s '71 Ford Rach Wagon was still practically brand new when the tailgate window shattered. Dad did tell my sister to make sure she shut the tailgate hard.
Hubs was in the auto repair business for over 30 years and knows stuff. I asked him about your windshield and he says some people are just unlucky enough to manage to hit the windshield at just the right angle with just the right amount of force at the perfect temperature to break one. He also says that you will never be able to hit the sweet spot again unless you really work at it, and probably not even then.
Just a simple yes/no question that feels like it might be relevant:
Do you know what this is (do you have some prior familiarity with the concept) ?
Glass is an odd substance. I once saw a demonstration where a glass rod was dipped in an acid to dissolve away and smooth any tiny cracks or roughness. It was then possible to bend the rod to a degree that seemed freakish, to anyone used to the usual fragility of glass.
But the demonstrator then wafted a normal facial tissue so it barely kissed the outside edge of the bent rod, which snapped immediately. Even the imperceptible micro scratches created by the tissue were enough to start a crack that caused the break.
I suspect your windshield had a tiny pre-existing crack.
Heh, when I was young I broke a windshield by trying to kill a wasp that had gotten in my car by poking it with a yardstick. I wasn’t even poking it hard. Sometimes you catch the glass at the right spot with the right amount of force, and it’s done for.
I was driving with one of the hounds in the front seat, the hound who absolutely had to bark and any other dogs he saw as we moved. When we were stopped at a light someone dared to cross in front of us walking a dog. Mine barked hysterically and finally lunged into the windshield smashing it from the inside.
When I took the car in to get the windshield replaced, the guy asked what had caused it – it was low down and obviously not caused by a point impact, like a rock. When I told what happened he followed up with, “So what happened to the dog?”
“Absolutely nothing – he didn’t even stop barking.”
I had a large drip of slushy water fall from a tree onto the windshield right above where the defroster was heating it and it cracked. This was a time where I was cracking 1 windshield per year, this went on for 5 or 6 years. Don’t know why but I’m glad that is over.