Windshield Polish

[joe newsom]

Has anyone had and success with polishing the pits and scratches (left by wiper blades) away? I believe I have a original windshield that would be worth trying this to.

 

 

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[Namerow]

I had mixed results trying to remove scratches on some side windows.  They appeared to have been made by PO's trying to scrape off ice using some kind of metal scraping edge*.  I was using a bench-mounted buffer and an aggressive buffing compound.  Glass is hard.  If it's been deeply scratched by a sharp metal edge (like a wiper arm when the rubber blade gives up), don't expect miracles from what is essentially industrial-grade toothpaste.  That said, there are materials harder than glass (diamond dust comes to mind).  If you can find and afford whatever that compound might be -- and I'm sure it's out there, somewhere -- then it might solve your problem.  In the end, though, my guess is that a new windshield will be the better solution.

(* If you live in Canada, you'll know that there's a certain kind of desperation that sets in when it's below 0 degrees F, the wind is howling, it's snowing hard, you need to get to work, and your windows won't go up or down because there's a layer of ice gluing them to the weatherstrip).

[Patcon]

9 hours ago, joe newsom said:

 

Has anyone had and success with polishing the pits and scratches (left by wiper blades) away? I believe I have a original windshield that would be worth trying this to.

 

 

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There is a specific material that glass shops use to polish glass, but the name escapes me right now.

I have used polishing compound on my son's Datsun on a 7" VS buffer. Every door we do, we polish the window before reassembly. It is not a cure all. It does help but on deep scratches what tends to happen is the scratch just gets polished up, not polished out. So it's ends up as a groove with polished sides. better but not perfect, but for general dullness from years of going up and down against grimey window felts it works good

[Zup]

1 hour ago, Patcon said:

There is a specific material that glass shops use to polish glass, but the name escapes me right now.

Would that polish be Cerium oxide?

[joe newsom]

Thank you for the info


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[Patcon]

11 hours ago, Zup said:

Would that polish be Cerium oxide?

Yes, I believe that is correct.

I wonder what the polishing grit is in professional paint buffing compounds?

[SteveJ]

I used some Griots glass polishing compound on my 260Z windshield. It's very badly pitted and has some deep windshield wiper scrapes. It was a "it couldn't hurt" effort, and I couldn't see any difference for better or worse.

Basically, from what I understand, most retail type glass polishing products are for extremely light scratches. If you can hook your fingernail on the scratch, it's too deep.

[Matthew Abate]

I know this is dead thread resurrection, but this is the best existing thread to ask this question and don't see the answer anywhere on the forum…

Does anyone know if polishing the glass has any effect on the blue tint of the OEM glass? I don't know where that blue tint exists. Is it a film on one or both sides of the glass, or is it internal. Is the glass itself blue, or is there a layer of blue film sandwiched between two or more layers of glass?

I am getting ready to try polishing a rear hatch glass on the outside and don't want to find that I have rubbed away the blue tint when I am finished.

[Racer X]

1 hour ago, Matthew Abate said:

I know this is dead thread resurrection, but this is the best existing thread to ask this question and don't see the answer anywhere on the forum…

Does anyone know if polishing the glass has any effect on the blue tint of the OEM glass? I don't know where that blue tint exists. Is it a film on one or both sides of the glass, or is it internal. Is the glass itself blue, or is there a layer of blue film sandwiched between two or more layers of glass?

I am getting ready to try polishing a rear hatch glass on the outside and don't want to find that I have rubbed away the blue tint when I am finished.

The tint is in the glass and can’t be polished away.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Racer X

[Racer X]

On 8/4/2018 at 6:37 AM, Patcon said:

The polishing compounds for paint are not aggressive enough to polish glass. If they were, they would cut the paint and make it dull. The paint is much softer than glass.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Racer X

[mailnome]

I used to do auto detailing and used to participate in a detailing forum, Autogeek.

I’ve read a bit about it and have only tried doing it a little.

Basically a very time consuming and messy process and you may not get the results you want. Use a rotary polisher and a cerium oxide polish and you have to keep wetting/spraying it which causes the machine to sling it everywhere. You also run the risk of creating waves in the glass if you go too crazy with it and are not consistent with your application.


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[26th-Z]

I agree.  The windshield glass (and all the glass for that matter) is tempered glass.  Very hard, and you are going to create waves in the glass which will distort the light coming through it.  Groovy, man...

You're not going to buff out any chips.  I have seen some liquid glass filler used pretty successfully.

Edited July 22, 2022 by 26th-Z