[murasaki]

Hi,

Has anyone ever fixed arching scratches on their windshield? I thought I had just done a poor job of cleaning my windshield--- but today, in the sunlight, I noticed TWO arches of scratches which must've been caused by the wiper blades :-( !! Any suggestions on how to fix this unwanted rainbow? The wiper blades were just changed at the Honda dealership and I keep the whole car inside and out extremely clean, so you can imagine how bad I feel about my scratched baby.

Murasaki

 

[Rick]

Drag your finger nail across it, if it stops in the scratch it's probably too deep to do much of anything about. If it doesn't then there's a possibility it can be removed.

http://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/prod ... word=40011

 

[garrettkjr]

scratch fix

A windshield shop can fix it with a special glass buffing compound. However, the compound isn't cheap. It's a VERY fine abrasive and comes with special buffer pads. Some kits even come with a special high speed buffer. The problem is that it's time consuming and most shops would rather spend less time by replacing the whole windshield, which costs you less by the time they factor in labor and the cost of the buffing kit. You may even have a hard time finding a shop that has the equipment and wants to spend the time on it. As a used car dealer, I've run into this a a couple of times. One Mazda had severe scratches from the wipers to the point where you could barely see at night from the glare in the scratches. A BMW had a couple of scratches that came from some kind of equipment at a body shop where a repair was done before I bought it. Since I can buy stuff wholesale, I considered buying the supplies for myself, but it was still cheaper to just put a windshield in the Mazda. I left the BMW alone since it wasn't a safety issue and the scratches were not all over the windshield like with the Mazda. Seems like I was able to improve the vision through the BMW scratch with some polishing compound and waxing, but that would still be a temporary fix.

 

[murasaki]

Guys,

Thanks for your suggestions. I did the fingernail test and I couldn't feel any ridges, so I ordered some glass restoration buffing compound through a company called Janvil ( http://www.janvil.com). It's a hand buffing kit but they also have a power buffing one too. I hope my baby (Akachan) soon will be scratchless.


Murasaki

 

[garrettkjr]

If I remember correctly, the stuff I was going to buy was about $80 from a company that sells supplies to windshield repair companies. I'm not sure about that fingernail test though. Glass is so hard that the scratch doesn't have to be very deep for it to be very difficult to buff out. Scratches from dry and worn out wipers shouldn't be very deep, but are probably a pain because they cover so much surface area. Let us know how that works out.