Dent Repair Factors: Glass Identification

by | Jan 27, 2020 | Dent Repair, Educational

Dent Repair Factors: Glass Identification

 

Why does the glass in your door matter when doing a price quote for your door ding?

Well today we will be discussing how the glass in the door of your vehicle will determinant what steps are need in order to perform your dent repair. There are two different style of glasses that they put in vehicles. One being the traditional tempered glass which is one solid piece of glass, the other being laminated safety glass. Laminated safety glass is actually 2 pieces of glass glued together with plastic in between them.

Why Do Manufactures Do this?

Why do they have 2 different style of glasses you ask? There are multiple reasons why a manufacture would choose Laminated safety glass over your traditional tempered glass. The biggest reason would be safety, in the event of an accident laminated glass does not shatter like your traditional tempered glass. The reason being is the plastic in between the 2 outer pieces of glass will actually hold the structure of the glass even when it is broken. This type of glass is what is used in windshields, so when you get damage to your windshield it does not shatter it cracks, the same is true for laminated safety glass in your door. This glass holds its form so when an airbag is deployed or the vehicle is perhaps involved in a roll over for instance it will not blow out or break the side glass when the structure of the door frame is compromised or is heavily impacted. Another big reason for this glass choice and why it is typically found in more highly optioned and high end vehicles is noise. This glass is thicker and has multiple layers making it harder for sound to go though, so it is actually quieter, you will have less road noise transmitted through this glass.

Check out our video on how to better identify your glass and have us explain this whole process:

Hi there, I’m Jack with Sioux Falls Dent Repair. If you don’t know what this is, this is actually the window from the right front door of this Lincoln MKZ. Now you’re probably asking yourself, “Why the heck does he have this out of the vehicle? Don’t they just do dent repair? They don’t tint windows.” Well, you’re absolutely right. We don’t do any type of window tinting at all. We do only paintless dent repair. But, I’m going to go and run through a couple of reasons of why I have this glass out of the vehicle, and why I had to take it out of the door of this Lincoln, in order to perform paintless dent repair on this passenger front door.

Now, the reason why I have to actually pull this glass out of the vehicle in order to perform paintless dent repair, is because it is what is called laminated safety glass. What laminated safety glass is, it’s the same makeup as your windshield. So when you get a, let’s say for instance, a rock chip in your windshield, all you’re left with is a crack or a chip in the window. That’s the same type of makeup of glass that we have right here in my hands.

Now, you’re wondering, “Okay, well why is this car in particular?” With this being a Lincoln, this is the higher-end model of a Ford-manufactured vehicle. What this has is specialized of laminated safety glass in the front doors only of this vehicle. So, if you call and get an estimate for a door ding, a question I may or may not ask you if I’m unsure of it. Most of the time I have a general idea, if it does or does not. But, I actually have to look at the markings in the bottom of this glass here, and I’m pointing to it with my fingers, it’s kind of hard to see. But it’ll actually say either tempered or laminate glass on it. This glass here actually does say laminated.

The reason why I have to pull this out in order to perform paintless dent repair is my traditional repairs, I’ve installed a metal window guard against this glass, and push off the glass. If I put any pressure whatsoever on the glass, this type of glass specifically, it cracks. I don’t want to purchase a $200 to $700 piece of glass to do a door ding on a vehicle. So, it has to be removed, in order to safely perform these repairs.

Unfortunately, not every vehicle states on the glass if it’s laminated or tempered. Tempered is the other type of glass that will actually shatter if hit. We could put a lot of pressure on that without any problem at all, as long as we have a window guard, preferably a metal window guard, installed between the glass and the tool. Another way to actually check it is to actually roll the window down, and actually feel the edge of the glass. So we’re actually really lucky on this one. This actually has laminated glass in the front, and tempered glass in the rear. So I’m going to go ahead and show you how the class actually looks. So, roll the glass down just a little bit, and as you could see, you can see it’s two pieces of glass. Versus, tempered glass. It is one solid piece.

All right, so we, anyways, we hope you learned something in this video here. If you enjoyed anything you learned, or did learn anything, hit that like button and subscribe to our channel, so you can see some of the newest content that we deliver, whether it be tools, tips, tricks, actual dent repairs, customer reviews, help with identifying components in your own vehicle, even walking through, taking things apart and everything like that. And we’re going to have some videos coming to that here shortly. Anyway, so we appreciate you watching, and I don’t have a tagline yet, so, thanks!

 

Hopefully this helps you better understand the glass make up in your vehicle and why we have to know which style of glass it is when doing a dent repair on your door for instance.

Do you have more questions or need a repair done on your own vehicle?

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