Car Glass Repairs And Windscreen Replacements in the UK
Why is car glass so unusual? Isn’t it just like every other piece of translucent material we come into contact with every day? Nope. A thousand times, nope. It’s one of the most crucial elements in our daily driving lives and frequently stands as the decisive thin line between life and death. Too dramatic for you? Maybe, but let’s have a frank discussion on it, and then you can come to your own conclusions.What is car glass, and what is it made of?
When you look at cars and the various glass components that get installed inside them, you’ll encounter two types of glass, either laminated or tempered variants.
Front windscreens are laminated, and every other type of car glass – like those installed in the rear windscreen and side-door windows – are tempered.
Laminated
Although not immune from breaking, they designed this type of car glass to withstand far more levels of punishment than any other car glass segments before eventually breaking into shards.
Their reasoning for this? To prevent any deadly injuries occurring from sharp shards of glass coming into play during a sudden accident and also to successfully stop any occupants of the vehicle from going through the windscreen during the collision.
This glass type is also easier to repair in cases where it has minor damages so that you do not need to replace your windscreen whenever it’s damaged, which saves on time on money.
You can produce Laminated glass by combining two glass sheets with a polyvinyl layer in between them. Once arranged together, these sheets are fused by high heat levels and then quenched by cold water to form laminated glass.
Tempered Glass
This type of glass is created primarily in mind to break and crumble more easily than laminated windscreens. The glass shards from this breakage are smaller and have rounded edges rather than sharp lines, which in turn won’t harm anybody they come into contact with should there be an accident.
The unfortunate side effect to this design is that if a crack does appear (maybe from a pebble tossed from the road or a tree branch flung about in the wind), you can’t get it repaired; it requires a complete replacement each time there are any signs of breakage. Luckily this glass is cheaper and easier to make than laminated glass.
We make tempered car glass through rapidly heating and then sudden cooling only one glass layer.
How has the glass in our windscreens changed over the years?
When you look at the history of the windscreen, it’s interesting to see the change in strength and technical ability. The first Ford Model T vehicles created the original windscreen in 1904 because of drivers getting swatted by stones, flitting insects, and any number of troublesome airborne projectiles that you’ll still face daily on your driving route. They formed a thin glass pane as a shield, roughly the same type as a modern house window might have to resist this annoyance.
As cars grew in demand and technology enabled them to increase their speed, roadside injuries became more frequent, and glass shards entered into the fray to lead to significantly more severe results.
These wounds led the charge in producing car glass types that were more enduring and less likely to end in bodily harm in case they did shatter. This lead to the production of laminated and tempered glass discussed earlier.
In 1947, they founded the concept of rounded windscreens to the scene, and in another ten years, tints were discovered and were all the rage to help battle glare from the sun, often amplified by the properties of glass before tinting.
Today’s latest windscreens are pretty different from their predecessors, such as being more widespread and covered in a dye film
What does OEM mean?
Original Equipment Manufacturer, abbreviated to OEM, means that the components used to reconstruct the broken glass section in question came from your vehicles’ original producer and not a general goods ones
Why does this matter for car glass?
When the vehicle manufacturing company that manufactured your car designed and assembled the glass for your windscreens’ and side windows, they designed the shape of that glass pane precisely with your particular vehicle in mind.
Some glass companies take those specific glass parts and sell them for other vehicles without paying too much attention to the finer details. This approach results in a predicament since installing glass parts that are not compatible or OEM certified will not fit. These parts won’t interact with other pieces in the way they are designed to.
Glass technicians who aren’t well-versed in how these parts operate together or the proper installation methods could wield these materials, leading to a tangle of future problems.
To save yourself countless hours of problems and questionable quality glass, rather believe in car glass technicians who are OEM-certified.
What are ADAS’s?
ADAS is short for advanced driver-assistance systems. ADAS was developed to both increase vehicle security and present greater convenience.
They do this by informing the driver of any potential dangers and – when needed and if feasible – initiating safeguards that support you with the aforementioned dangerous situation.
ADAS include features like aided braking, adaptive cruise handling and road sign classification. The car glass ADAS characteristics usually incorporate a windscreen camera, electronically heated or soundproofed windscreens and a Heads-Up display.
What are some windscreen features that my car could have?
With cars gaining more exciting and flashy gadgets over the years, it was only a manner of time before they started cooperating directly with your vehicle’s glass sections.
Rain Sensor
Utilising light sensor technology to ascertain how much moisture is touching your windscreen at any given time, a rain sensor was produced in mind to support in the war versus driver’s distractions. It assures that your scope of vision never becomes too distorted by precipitation without you noticing.
Once a pre-determined amount of rainfall (or any water really) gets into contact with your windscreen, a notification is sent to the windscreen wipers to alter their action accordingly.
Acoustic Windscreens
By adding an additional layer of vinyl to your laminated windscreen, your windscreen will obtain sound-dampening attributes and create a haven of quietness inside of your car. The external world’s sonance levels will slip away as you drive, along with all your worries.
Windscreen Camera
This ingenious little device logs video knowledge while driving and supports you in becoming more aware of the outside atmosphere to react better and faster to possible threats. It’s also helpful for parking flawlessly on the first try and to render footage in those annoying court situations where you have to show the car accident mishap “wasn’t your fault”.
Green Tint / Grey Sun Strip
You might possibly notice that specific vehicles’ car glass has a slight greenish tint or that their windscreens have a grey piece bar near the top part.
These both serve the same related function; removing the sun’s blinding glare and defending your skin from its damaging UV rays.
It’s a full day’s job; the times you’re most inclined to be blinded are in the morning and sunset when the sun rises and sets, and midday is when the sun’s rays have the most significant potential to injure your skin.
Electrically Heated Windscreen
Electrically heated glass is made when you triple-glaze the glass, allowing them to carry electronically-controlled radiant warmth, thus contributing to your car a magnified thermal-level luxury. It also supports with any worries of erosion and visibility problems caused by frost crystallisation or blizzard-type damage.
Heads Up Display
What Head-Up Displays can do is broadcast a floating picture of the essential information you’d find extremely beneficial when driving your car.
It’s presented directly onto of the windscreen before you.
Most head-up displays will confer everything from your driving speed, cruise control and helpful directions.
What’s the difference between a windscreen repair and a windscreen replacement?
A windscreen repair is a comparatively simple process, and in many instances, even one you can strive to do yourself. When there are barely any small cracks on the screen, and they aren’t too large, car glass technicians can generally repair them promptly instead of needing to entirely replace them, which is a more complicated and costly procedure.
However, the process will switch over from a repair to a whole replacement if one of the following conditions is found:
- The chip on your windscreen can’t be covered by a £2 coin.
- Location-wise, if the damage is less than 3cm distant from the car’s frame edge.
- If the windscreen chip or dent covers the driver’s field of vision.
- The side of the damage is on the interior and not the exterior.
If this happens, it means the damage has reached through a number of the glass and vinyl layers, and for your protection (as well as everyone in the car), you will need a complete replacement.
This is where the car glass specialist will come and extract the entire windscreen and substitute it with another one of better sound quality, along with the other parts that interact with glass, as mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately, this typically necessitates a whole lot more time and money to complete.
What affects the cost of my car glass or windscreen replacement?
A few factors are required to perceive and notify the glass technician before they arrive, guaranteeing the exact windscreen is brought along. It will ultimately conclude the final cost of your windscreen replacement.
When we estimate the price of your windscreen replacement, we have to weigh several determinants.
Windscreen replacements can vary anywhere from £150 to £1000 to perform. The three most important factors that determine this cost are the car make, model, and year of production.
Make
The phrase “make” arises from the phrase automaker, which notifies us which organisation built that car. A case of this would be Volkswagen, Peugeot or Ferrari. The more elegant the make, the more challenging the costs will be due to the more costly parts being required.
Model
The car model is the catchword applied by the vehicle manufacturers to sell their diverse ranges of comparable cars—the systems used by them to organise their product span over other models alternating between different manufacturers.
For example, the Ford models’ difference would be the Ford Bronco and the Ford Cougar. Same make – yes – but a whole different variety regarding features, specs and styles.
Year
The year they produced your car plays a fundamental role in the total cost. The BMW 3-series manufactured in 1991 versus the BMW 3-series made in 2021 will have less high-level characteristics and specs, making it more accessible and inexpensive to replace.
Who should Icgo to for the best windscreen replacement or car glass repair?
Who should I go to for the best windscreen replacement or car glass repair?
At UK Car Glass, we aim to produce the best feasible service at the most affordable and favourable prices on the market.
But there is an excess of opposing car glass repair corporations, so why take our word over theirs?
We offer Nation-wide-coverage
We can approach you anyplace within the UK, as long as it’s available for travel through land or bridge. You will no longer need to carry yourself someplace within a severely endangered windscreen or other splintered sections of car glass!
An efficient website
Our website has your convenience in mind with its layout. Book an installation at a day and time that works best for your calendar, and we’ll assign one of our qualified experts.
Raving reviews from previous clients
Read about us from others if you don’t want to just take our word for it! Examine our past reviews, and you’ll realise that our customer concern, the quality of work from our adept technicians, and glass material quality surpasses that of any of our nearest competitors!
Book with us today, and give your vehicle the service it deserves.
BOOK YOUR WINDSCREEN REPLACEMENT
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