Windshield messed up !

[kjphilippona]

Hi, the windshield on my 77' 280z has so many tiny pits and swirls in it, i can hardly see thru it at night or when the sun shines thru directly thru. Is there any thing i can do to repair this ? Is replacing the windshield my only option ?

[Oiluj]

You can "try" glass polish..., but my guess iss that it's just time for a new windshield. Not much you can do about all those tiny pits.

Better to spend the money on new glass than crash into somethng because you can't see!

[lbpdz]

and if the straw that broke the camels back is a traffic citation, you will just have to bit the bullet and get a new one. They won't let cops sign off "attempted" repairs, as they do nothing to restore the function of the safety glazing..

[MikeW]

I used this kit from Eastwood with some success on my original windshield. A previous owner had let the wipers (or lack thereof) create deep scratches in the glass. There were also a lot of pits as you've described. When I had my car repainted I bought a new windshield which unfortunately broke on install so we put the original back in causing me to try and repair it. I may buy new glass at some point anyway because even though the deep scratches are gone the glass is a bit "wavy" because of the amount of glass removed.

Since the kit is considerably less than a new windshield you could give it a try and if it doesn't work well enough you could go ahead and replace the windshield at a later date. It does work a lot easier with an angle grinder/polisher instead of a drill so you'll need to take that into account if you don't already have one of those.

[JohnnyO]

Mike, just curious how it handled the "sand blasting" of the wind shield? I looked at other products at Eastwood and think this may be too aggressive for minor pitting.

Any opinnion?

John

[MikeW]

If you literally have deep pits uniformly covering the entire windshield it would be an incredible amount of work. Like any polishing operation you're removing material (in this case glass) to reduce the entire surface level down to the bottom of the imperfection(s). I was less concerned about the pits from sand than the deep scratches from the wipers. I concentrated on the deep scratches (anything that you can feel will your fingernail). The deep scratch kit contains the colored abrasive disks which can remove a lot of material. The normal kit is a powder that is mixed with water and applied with a felt pad. It can remove shallow imperfections like hazing or acid rain etching, etc. There's a different product, which I haven't tried, which looks like another alternative.