That's right, 4 in 4 years and I've another chip slowly growing, but it's too late (if ever there was a chance) to fix it cheaply.
One reason might be that I do maybe 15,000 miles a year in the car; of that, 6,000 a year or more is on French autoroutes where I stick to the limit of 130kph (81mph) or a tad over.
I don't tailgate and leave plenty of room in front, and I try not to drive on the dirty parts of the road where the cr*p builds up. On most trips I hear at least one ping where the screen is hit and often there's no obvious damage.
On one occasion a bit of lorry tyre tread shot across the central reservation and clouted the top of my screen where fortunately it met the roof line, flapped about a bit and fell off. Had it hit a bit lower I might not be here today.
Am I unlucky? Or are windscreens pretty much consumable items these days ?
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Some car models used to get through a lot of windscreens through body flexing, or more likely individual examples of certain models (manufacturing accuracy, spot welds failing or omitted, that sort of thing). Mechanized assembly should have eliminated a lot of that, but perhaps not 100%?
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That's an interesting point. But in this case it's for two cars - one for the first 3 years and another for the fourth year.
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Is this all in the same car?
If yes, body flexing? or possibly cheap (structurally inadequate) replacements?
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No, as before- 2 cars .... and there is the case of bits of tyre making sub-orbital flights along the motorway.
Cheap replacements on car 1 could be an issue. Having a little experience now, I'm sure the new windscreens had a ripple effect in places close to the edges which the original did not.
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The Lancer has done 90k miles, and the screen is peppered with chips (none big enough in the right area to fail MOT yet tho). One or two got short (1-2mm) radial cracks but none have propagated beyond that, despite being driven on some rough roads.
Clearly the lancer screen is not a highly stressed part of the body shell. The fact the screen is fairly flat helps as well I think.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 17 Feb 14 at 20:07
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I have a suspicion that aftermarket screens are not up to much.... I've only had to replace one OE screen - that on a Xsara Picasso which got a stone chip right in the centre of the driver's view. The replacements lasted on average 10 months - being replaced twice more. The Xantia, on the other hand, is on its original screen at 156k. Granted it is peppered with small chips, but it has a large bullet in the passenger side (just on the right side of the MOT rules) that has been there more than 4 years and 60k miles, and shows no signs of wanting to crack!
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>> On most
>> trips I hear at least one ping where the screen is hit and often there's
>> no obvious damage.
I find that surprising. I also do 15k a year, and I think something has hit the windscreen perhaps four or five times in my driving career. It's a talking point when It happens every couple of years anyway.
I've had two windscreens in 36 years.
No idea why that would be so different from your experience, other than, I guess, I don't go particularly quickly anywhere much. Usually dribble along at an indicated 68 on the motorway, which seems to keep me out of trouble, gets me there generally only a few minutes later than otherwise, keeps my fuel bills down and, it appears, saves me on windscreens!
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I've had to replace the screen in each of my last three cars, and the current one has a >1cm radiating chip in the swept area. I'm hoping to get away with that as it's actually behind the mirror, and whilst the passenger always sees it I never do.
At least two of the fatal chips were caused by people overtaking when I was bimbling. I avoid hatched areas where there is usually grit but impatient overtakers tend to cut across them spraying it around.
And then of course there's FF doing his rumble strip routine on the A41...I don't think he's got me yet, don't use it much now.
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"....No idea why that would be so different from your experience, other than, I guess, I don't go particularly quickly anywhere much. Usually dribble along at an indicated 68 on the motorway, which seems to keep me out of trouble, gets me there generally only a few minutes later than otherwise, keeps my fuel bills down and, it appears, saves me on windscreens!..."
As well as poorer glass, speed may well be a factor and maybe I'm paying the price. But, to average 10mph more over the length of a long day on near empty motorways cuts more than an hour, maybe 90 minutes off each European jaunt. I'm pretty much at the end of my tether at journey's end anyway and if it were to take much longer I'd be looking at overnight accommodation.
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I am on my fourth windscreen in four years of owning the Rio.
I do the same journey as I did in my old Astra and never had to replace the windscreen in seven years of ownership.
I drive about 10,000 miles a year.
I think its down to the design of the car in terms of the angle of the windscreen.
The Rio has a flaw in this regard, if the windscreen had a shallower angle then stones would bounce off easier.
Another thought is that the quality of our tax funded roads has decreased over the past five years. Much more broken bits of tarmac just waiting to be flicked into the air.
More recent harsh winters and the lack of money going into the road system is to blame along with some car designs
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Until last year I never had a windscreen replaced - I had a hire car with a chipped windscreen but it turned into a crack.
Driving on the motorway at 70-80mph a stone hit the screen and nothing visible in terms of damage. Forgot about it. A week later parked up somewhere near home and got back and the screen had cracked badly.
It was the stone chip and temperature difference on the day it cracked. But the chip was never repairable it seems. The stone hit low down where the screen is bonded to the car and even if you'd gone for a fix the screen needed replacing. It was a chip that was always going to crack the screen - bonding and rigid figment apparently means this would go.
So buying a new car... check for stone chips low down on the screen where it is black behind - not the visible section.
Result for me. Annoying scratch gone (old thread on that I think).
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"Am I unlucky?"
Well since very few people encounter that number of breakages the I suppose you are but statistically it is of course impossible from a sample of one to tell whether the number of breakages overall is increasing, decreasing or remaining unchanged.
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I have had two windscreen replacements in 45 years of motoring.....
One was in my VW Polo many years back , screen was hit by something hard thrown up from a lorry wheel on the M40 near High Wycombe whilst I was travelling at 70 mph one Sunday evening....the screen was laminated and luckily held but the car also had a dented bonnet and the wipers were mangled.....it was real brown trouser moment......when you see something heading towards you at that speed and you know you cannot avoid it.
I was also parked at work one morning .....when along with several colleagues I was called to the reception area where we were taken to the car park to find our cars covered with wet ready mix concrete which had been accidentally sprayed over them from the building of the companys new office next door by a concrete pump.... complete respray and new windscreen on the company insurance.....
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If speed is a factor then surely it is the speed of others cars throwing up the stones that cause the cracks that count, not your own speed?
I must have been exceptionally lucky. In 47 years of motoring I have never even had a chip in a windscreen. I cover about 25,000 miles a year.
Having said that I'd better run out and quickly touch a wooden dashboard :)
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>> If speed is a factor then surely it is the speed of others cars throwing up the stones that cause the cracks that count, not your own speed?
Heh heh... think about it CP. When a car runs over a stone or other object in the road it simply chucks it up in the air. It's the speed of the following car that causes the stone chip or shattered windscreen.
Following another car at about 40 down Harrow Road once, it ran over a housebrick and tossed it up off the ground. The Dyane I was driving had a plunging bonnet line and I thought the brick was going to ricochet off that and brain me, but it bounced off the top of one of the rubber-faced front bumper overriders bending it quite severely. A small price to pay for keeping one's teeth and matinee-idol looks.
Later that same car's toughened flat windscreen fell into my lap at 70-plus in the outside lane of the M1 without any apparent stone, bolt or other object hitting it. The rest of the journey was a bit uncomfortable, but the replacement screen agreeably cheap.
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I've been reasonably lucky so far I think. Probably no more than 4 or maybe 5 screens replaced in nigh on a million and a half miles.
Scariest thing I saw bouncing towards me once on the motorway was one of those crowbar-ish things they use to crank artic trailers up and down with. Thumping big inch thick/diameter metal bar about 2.5 feet long with a crank bent into it. Came bowling down the carriageway having presumably detached itself from a truck and appeared to be heading straight for my eyeline while I was doing ( ahem ) 70 mph. Somehow it sailed straight over my roof without touching my car.
That might have hurt.
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>> Heh heh... think about it CP. When a car runs over a stone or other
>> object in the road it simply chucks it up in the air. It's the speed
>> of the following car that causes the stone chip or shattered windscreen.
>>
Is that what happens? I imagined that stones were fired out from under the wheels of cars that were driving fast.
I've had near-misses from stones that have whizzed past from speeding cars overtaking on new chippings. I've sometimes thought I would be safer to be matching their speed rather than hanging back patiently waiting to be machine-gunned.
But I can see obviously that driving into a "stationary" stone at 80 mph is likely to do more damage than hitting it at 60.
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>> I imagined that stones were fired out from under the wheels of cars that were driving fast.
Only by (say) a rally car getting violent wheelspin while accelerating hard on a loose surface.
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>> I must have been exceptionally lucky. In 47 years of motoring I have never even
>> had a chip in a windscreen. I cover about 25,000 miles a year.
>>
I find that absolutely astonishing - I drive cautiously in my own car since opting out of the company car scheme and do regular 400 mile trips from the north-west into the central south.
It's rare that I don't take a hit at some point during the round trip. Last one was an absolutely terrific bang but it chipped the just inside the NS edge. I've even had them happen when there are no other vehicles around - I'm sure birds are dropping stones on me!
People overtaking in speed limited areas of single carriageway A roads and spraying me with stones as they cross the centre of the road in front of me is a regular occurence. Someone above mentioned people using hatched areas to overtake and that's a pet hate of mine too.
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I remember following a tipper that had half a house brick stuck between it's offside rear tyres.
That was one occasion I dropped back and changed lane pretty smartly !
HO
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>> a tipper that had half a house brick stuck between it's offside rear tyres.
I'd forgotten those... yes, they do induce a sudden mimse.
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>> People overtaking in speed limited areas of single carriageway A roads
I don't get that very much. I wonder - do you use satnav and set your speed by it? More and more people are doing so I guess, and of course as your car speedo is going to be about 10% under, those using the satnav for their speed indicator would find you slow.
Indeed, I had one in front of me this morning - 40 limit, and perhaps he thought it was a 30, so he was driving at an indicated 35 on my speedo. Satnav showed that to be 32. Felt very plodding for a 40 clear road and impatient drivers were hopping to overtake, and did so. I expect lots of them could see it was really nearer 32 as well.
Just an idea.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Wed 19 Feb 14 at 07:57
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>> People overtaking in speed limited areas of single carriageway A roads and spraying me with
>> stones as they cross the centre of the road in front of me is a
>> regular occurrence.
Indicates to me that your idea of driving cautiously is so outrageously slow that people behind you are getting angry and impatient.
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>> Indicates to me that your idea of driving cautiously is so outrageously slow that people
>> behind you are getting angry and impatient.
>>
I'm certainly not doing that. All the villages around here have had their 30 limits stretched right out, and then you're straight into NSL.
I push it to the limit and either use cruise or the speed limiter set at 35MPH. At 36 around here you'll get done. Even if it's over-reading a couple of MPH I'm still doing 33. If it's clear as far as I can see then I'll speed up too.
The sort of people I'm talking about are 3 Series BMW driving sales reps who would probably still pass even if I was doing 50.
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Crikey. Sympathies. Where do you live, on the banks of the River Testosterone?
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I must try the depressed mimse some time. It will make a change from spraying other cars with small stones as I irritably overtake them over cross-hatchings or undertake them down the hard shoulder.
Perhaps then I will be able to boast of all the chips and gouges in my windscreen too. It's pretty unmarked.
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The stupid thing is that it's VERY easy to get done here (Cheshire) without going mad at all.
I took my daughter's car for service this morning and there was a motorbike cop with hand-held laser on the approach to the garage. It's a wide road, quiet as it's half-term, and he was standing well to the side off the road with his back to bushes so not easy to see.
The garage has moved recently so I was looking out for it but it's a road where 40 would feel perfectly comfortable - thankfully he dropped the gun and looked away as I passed.
The reason I know they take action at 36 is my daughter got a SAC for that speed last year. Keeps people in jobs, I suppose.
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I notice Alpraham ( a small village in Cheshire with its very own set of 2 speed cameras ) has recently gone from a 40 limit to a 30. Maybe some councillor's cat got run over or something.
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4 windscreens in 4 years - unlucky or what ? - Armel Coussine
