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Road test, cracked windshield...what's the deal?

11K views 20 replies 15 participants last post by  littletruck 
#1 ·
So I'm going for my Class 5 road test Sept 22, but the vehicle I am taking has a crack along the very bottom of the windshield (read: where the wipers sit). Is this going to be a problem? I know in the form it says vehicles with safety defects (ie: cracked windshields) MAY be rejected but it seems a little rediculous for them to turn someone back when they can still see perfectly fine. Has anyone else gone through with a cracked windshield and had success? Problems? Let me know. Cheers, Austin
 
#3 ·
The issue is probably more about the safety of the windshield because it is considerd a structural component of the vehicle and a crack drastically weakens it.

I wouldn't chance it on a road test, even if they let it slide, that may start the examiner off on the wrong foot.
 
#6 ·
That's bull, we can't keep windshields in our vehicles up here. All my rigs have cracked windshields. My wife's Grande Cherokee has a crack along the bottom just like you have, it was caused from ice being on there and the defrost on. Both my Dodges have cracked shields from rocks that hit them almost every day. My Comanchee has the original cracks in the shield from before I modified it, they havn't got any worse.
Where do you guys come up with this stuff?

Ask the examiner if it's cool.
 
#7 ·
My wife's Grande Cherokee has a crack along the bottom just like you have, it was caused from ice being on there and the defrost on.
A windshield won't crack just from that. There would have to have been a crack or chip in it to start with.



My Comanchee has the original cracks in the shield from before I modified it, they havn't got any worse.
Remove the cage and watch the chit happen. ;)



Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
Unibody's need the windshield for structure, it's just fact.



 
#12 ·
It's good in theory, but I didn't have the exo cage on that unibody for the first 4 yrs I wheeled it, and it had the cracks in it when I bought it - they haven't spread.

Yes the cold to hot will crack them along the bottom, it happens to a lot of windshields that deal with -40 wheather, and the driver doesn't clean the ice from the bottom of the glass for months.

Just trying to add some real world experience, I geuss you guys don't want to hear it so, see ya.:finger_1:
 
#14 ·
have ya ever thought that the crack has gone as far as it can go? as in too the edge of glass?

did you know that ur w/s is two pieces of glass" glued" together?thats why it cracks and runs not expodes in ur face like a house window...
 
#13 ·
It would seem logical that exposing one side of a window to -40 and the other side to +30 could cause stress. One side would expand while the other side is compressing. Ever taken a cheap glass out of a hot dishwasher and put lots of ice, rhum and coke in it. The bottom falls right out.

Going out on a limb here but I'm pretty sure that under certain loads glass can be stronger than steel so it would seem that an engineer could use the windshiled glass to add rigidity to a unibody vehicle to prevent the body from flexing and twisting.
 
#16 ·
I have it on very good authority (my girlfriend is an ICBC examiner) that they will take you out as long as it isn't in your line of sight.... but every office is different and it might be good to head in the day before and have one of the examiners have a look at it so you are sure
She says good luck... don't forget to check your blind spots and do the speed limit... not too fast OR too slow...
 
#18 ·
You get it all the time up north in the winter, whether or not rocks hit the glass (which is damn rare if they don't - even 8' off the ground in a highway rig with a 6' hood and 6" high bug deflector in front of it).

The larger the glass surface area the worse it is (ie. International 9900 or Volvo VN660 with a 1 pc windshield), cold day and you turn on the heat - *crack*. Windshield splits in half from top to bottom just that quickly and easily. And at up to $1200 for a windshield (over a fleet of 1200 trucks for us), no company's going to replace them 4 or 5 times a winter. A car windshield would have 1/4 of the protection of a commercial truck, so it'd be even worse for them (I just love it when cars tailgate me when they've just sanded the road, and have the balls to blame me for their rock chips).

With the older rubber kits, a windshield is more for protection than anything else, but the newer vehicles do rely heavily on them to keep the A pillars from collapsing during a rollover - not as much from the twisting motion of 'wheeling. Even on a full frame truck the body still gets tweaked hard, I dropped into the first big hole a little fast on the Whipsaw run and when the winch buried itself into the mud it caused the frame to twist and in turn cracked my windshield pretty much right across the bottom. A rock chip was what started it too (I think there's 6 or 8 in it, and the crack's jumping from chip to chip). The landing was hard enough it shovelled snow up onto the hood and buried the winch and grille. LR
 
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