Rdcrow

The winter has done a number on the windshield of my NX. There are a bunch of small hairline scratches on the driver side of my windshield. Where I live they put down a lot of sand and salt, so I'm guessing that is what caused it. The scratches are really light- you can't feel them with a fingernail and they can only be seen at night or when the light hits them at the right angle. Can anyone suggest a product that I could use to repair these, or is this something that a pro is going to need to do?

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

Glass polishing is significantly more difficult than polishing paint. Why? .. it's simple. Glass is WAY harder than paint and therefore WAY harder to level defects in.

CarPro makes a polish specifically for glass - CarPro Ceriglass - that contains cerium oxide. This polish is capable of removing light defects in glass when used with a glass cutting pad and is most effective with a rotary machine. Great caution must be used when polishing glass as drastic temp changes (ie from hot to cold, or vice versa) could result in shattered glass.

In all honesty, I personally wouldn't mess with it... but you can google "automotive glass polishing" and find some useful articles/write ups out there if you want to give it a shot.

-Zach

Rdcrow

I did some quick research earlier and CeriGlass was one of the products I read about. It sounds like it's what I need but I don't have a polisher so I'm not sure if I want to spend the money on one of those or just have a detailing place do it.

There's a pretty good detailing place that does glass polishing near my parent's house. I'm going to stop by there when I'm in town this weekend and see what they say/would charge.

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

Yep, seeking a professional would be the best choice in my opinion.

FSportIS

iTrader: (13)

Because glass is way harder than paint and Cquartz is glass coating, isn't that why it is more scratch resistant than paint? Is Cquartz also as hard as glass?

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

According to some research, automotive glass tends to range between 6-7 on the Mohs scale depending on if it is tempered glass or not. Quartz has a hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale, however I am not sure that CQuartz ever reaches this hardness.

CarPro is actually going through some extensive testing right now to determine the true hardness of their coatings in real life application scenarios... ie not with 10-20 coats and baked at unusually high temps like some coating manufacturers do in order to meet their hardness claims. I'll let you know what they find out when the results are in.

smokyis350

iTrader: (21)

Zach, do you know if using a razor blade to remove excess silicone will scratch up the rear windshield?

I was installing a roof spoiler with RTV Permatex silicone and a little bit of excess silicone squeezed out into the windshield.

GlenK

Have those small scratches in my windshield as well. May check out pro advice. Interested to read what Rdcrow finds out.

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

A razor blade like this one should be just fine as long as you keep the long edge of the blade against the windshield (compared to the short edge as if you were cutting something). Use a lubricant of some sort (glass cleaner) to allow the blade to glide along the surface.

UDel

I tried polishing out some scratches on my windshield with Ceriglass. I originally tried with a very thin hard glass polishing pad that was useless with my orbital polisher. I then tried with a different glass polishing pad that was thicker and softer(wish I remembered the names), I believe it had a red back. It was not easy at all and results were just okay on some light scratches, glass is so much harder then paint it is extremely hard to polish with tools designed to polish softer surfaces like paint. You really have to press down very hard and work the polish longer, you have to really keep the polish and pad wet. A rotary polisher would likely work better and is likely the proper tool for the original very hard pad I used.