As we have mentioned before, your car windscreen does much more than just keep the rain and wind out of your face while you drive, and it’s certainly not just a simple piece of glass. It is an important factor in the vehicle’s structural strength, and consists of a highly complex bonded structure with incredible resilience – in fact, a miracle of modern technology. Having said all that, there are some tasks that as a responsible vehicle owner you need to perform in order to keep your car windscreen, commercial windscreen or 4×4 windscreen in perfect order.
Keep it clean
It may sound obvious, but you cannot have good vision through a dirty windscreen, especially in difficult lighting conditions such as when the sun is bright or low in the sky. The inside of your windscreen will develop a hazy film over time, especially if you smoke in the vehicle, and it is important that this is regularly and thoroughly removed – there are plenty of proprietary glass cleaners specifically designed for car windscreens, so although domestic glass cleaner does work, it is often easier to use the products specifically designed for automotive use.
A full bottle of the correct strength of screen wash (including de-icer in winter) is a great help in keeping the outside of the windscreen clean, as is regularly renewing your windscreen wiper blades – they can last 2 years, but it is good practice to change them annually, and new blades clean better than old ones.
Get scratches and chips repaired immediately
Minor scratches in the windscreen can be a real nuisance, and contribute to dazzle in bright sunlight. Provided they are not in a critical area of the windscreen*, you can often polish them out yourself if you have the time and energy to do it. It’s a slow and tedious process, usually taking at least 1 hour of polishing for a shallow scratch, and you need to be careful not to cause further damage. The ideal solution is to get an expert such as a skilled myWindscreen technician to do the windscreen repair for you.
Chips can develop into major cracks if not treated quickly – you only need to hit a deep pothole (and there are plenty of those on our roads) and a minor chip can quickly develop into a crack that will leave you needing a whole new windscreen. Another problem with chips is that they fill with dirt over time, so when you do finally go to get a windscreen repair, it’s difficult to make the repair totally invisible due to the embedded dirt. Speed is of the essence, and of course you should only go to a reputable windscreen repair centre such as a myWindscreen member.
Chips up to 40mm across can usually be repaired provided they are not in the critical area*, where only 10mm chips are deemed to be repairable.
*The critical area of the windscreen or ‘A zone’ is a band 290mm wide which centres on the middle of the steering wheel, and reaches to the top and the bottom of the area swept by the windscreen wipers. Your local myWindscreen technician is ideally placed to advise you on the feasibility of repairs to your windscreen.
Don’t forget, damage to your windscreen can not only affect your vision, it can also cause your vehicle to fail the MOT if it’s in the critical area*, so get chips and scratches attended to quickly, professionally and economically via a mobile myWindscreen technician.
