Grrrr!

timbob · 15 Sep 2006 at 18:02

Was driving to work this morning through a local village, when all of a sudden a huge *BANG* shot through the car... "Oh crap," I think, "what's broken now...?" Look in the rearview mirror, and the rear screen is shattered. There's a lovely hole about a foot long down one side and the rest is just about hanging together. Got out the car, shut the door and the shock made the rest of the glass fall out.

It was throwing it down with rain, so I quickly scooped up the glass into a bag with my handy gloves, hotfooted it to work, and asked the caretaker for some gaffer tape and a bin bag.

RAC man (arranged through Admiral, my insurers) came out this afternoon once I got home, fixed in about 45 minutes flat, really nice bloke as well. Had to pay my £50 glass excess, but it's better than the £350 odd quid Autoglass (who don't work with admiral) wanted for the screen alone!

A much happier bunny this evening!

wasc · 15 Sep 2006 at 18:07

How on earth did THAT happen? Someone throw a brick or something??? :eek:

Enfield · 15 Sep 2006 at 18:11

Was it cold this morning?

timbob · 15 Sep 2006 at 18:17

No, was about 12-14 degrees and throwing it down with rain. The heated rear screen wasn't on, it just popped.

The fact that there was only a small hole to begin with led the windscreen guy to believe a stone probaly got thrown up by a car going the other way, the impact causing the screen to shatter. The rest of the screen only fell out after I slammed the drivers door, and I pulled the rest of the loose stuff off to leave the hole you can see there before covering it up with a bin bag.

Iamzod · 15 Sep 2006 at 23:18

Had the same happen on my dads Ford Capri about 5 years ago, really loud bang, no other cars on the road & the rear screen just turned to little cubes of glass.

Giddy · 15 Sep 2006 at 23:33

I remember someone with a MK4 Golf, closed the sunroof whilst on a motorway or dual carriageway and the same thing happened. Bizarre :confused:

Nathan · 19 Sep 2006 at 20:52

ignore

Firestar_3x · 19 Sep 2006 at 21:01

Since you say the rear heater wasn't on (thats what i was going to post saying had broken it) i would say its a badly fitted rear window, stress in the glass and its just shattered.

timbob · 19 Sep 2006 at 22:13

Firestar_3x said:
Since you say the rear heater wasn't on (thats what i was going to post saying had broken it) i would say its a badly fitted rear window, stress in the glass and its just shattered.

I'm fairly sure it was an impact - there was traffic going the other way, and there was some debris on the road, just general stones, gravel and the like. As I said, there was only a small hole to begin with at one particular point on the screen, but it was all shattered.

The picture you see above was taken about 8 hours later, after a day driving around at work, having pulled most of the rest of the screen out and covered it up with a bin liner to keep the rain out.