Broken windscreen

[Baryonyx]

Ecstasy turned to agony this afternoon. I'd spent the morning touring all over the shop in the XJ with the wife, quite contentedly. As I began my trip home, the windscreen wiper popped off. fk! I'd only just replaced it but an inspection of the wiper blade showed the plastic housing on the clip was stretched and wouldn't grip any more. I slid it back into place and drove around the clouds (literally) get myself home. Wrong wiper, perhaps...

On getting home, I lifted the blade off to look at the wiper and pulled the wiper arm up. I thought I had locked it in the 'up' position, but being spring loaded, it shot back down with a considerable force, striking the windscreen with the metal arm. There is now a spider-web shaped crack in the screen at the bottom where the arm is, with arms of about 3-4" in length. You can imagine I went absolutely fking wild (not least because I'll have to buy a new windscreen wiper)

Will my insurance cover this frankly, clumsy accidental damage? Or would I be better off buying a new windscreen myself and getting a fitter to fit it? It's a heated screen, so it may be a slightly more involved job than a non-heated screen...

[ianwayne]

If you have fully comp insurance, you should have windscreen cover. The excess varies (mine was £75) and it can be high with some companies. The windscreen fitting companies won't really care how it happened, they'll get their money anyway. Just tell them it was stone off a lorry..

Windscreens can be cheap (my old Astra a new one was £120) but heated ones will be very pricey.

[Baryonyx]

Aye, I'm going to give them a ring and see if they can sort me out. I imagine getting the parts myself and fitting would probably be quite an expensive task. Lessons learned about my own stupidity too...

[the_lone_wolf]

Baryonyx said:

Aye, I'm going to give them a ring and see if they can sort me out. I imagine getting the parts myself and fitting would probably be quite an expensive task.

Probably a higher chance of failure as well - I'll do most things on the car but windscreens I'd probably leave to one of the big outfits...

Plus, if your car has rain sensitive wipers and you don't re-fit the sensor correctly they won't work, few people even found this with Autoglass et al...

[405dogvan]

You can rest assured that the spring holding the arm is still in great condition if it can actually crack the screen!!

I've knocked/dropped 'empty' wiper arms more than once when changing blades and whilst you always think "Oh st" I've so-far not even left a mark...

I believe the surface of your screen is tougher than metal so it takes considerable force to break it - it's entirely possible the screen was weakened (likely just age but could be poorly fitted or inherently faulty) and you may have saved yourself a nasty moment when something hit it on the move!

GL!

[Glassman]

Try Euro Windscreens

http://euro-windscreens.co.uk/contact.php

[Martin_Hx]

Did exactly the same on my missus Merc, changing wiper blades, big whoops. Rang her insurance and paid about 80 quid to cover it and it's one with a light / rain sensor. I'll be a bit more careful next time!

[littlebasher]

I cracked the screen of a Renault 25 in exactly the same way years ago


More recently, me and the Mrs went to a carpet place to buy some lino. it's cut it to length and then rolled back onto its cardboard tube. Clever cloggs here puts it in the car diagonally, one end sat on the dash and the other just about in the boot. I thought it was fully in the boot, until i slammed it shut at which point the other end exited through the windscreen.

[gruffgriff]

Feel for you, did exactly the same to my heated screen. In addition to the advice to ensure rain sensors are reinstalled when the screen is replaced by 'whicheverglass', check the heating elements are functioning too......the feller that came to fit my second last Autumn after it became clear, alas only on the passenger side, that mine was faulty found a stanley blade left by the first fitter rusting merrily away behind where the glass would sit in a channel in the scuttle. ...

[Baryonyx]

405dogvan said:

You can rest assured that the spring holding the arm is still in great condition if it can actually crack the screen!!

Sadly, it is! It's a thick metal arm which hooks back on itself, from a short wiper arm (just one on the XJ). Hit the windscreen with quite a snap. Glad I'm not the only one to have fked up so spectacularly. I'm going to call my insurer tomorrow and hopefully get it resolved. Then off to Halfords for a new blade.

Why it's fking spring loaded, I don't know. Sure, it needs a bit of tension to make sure it stays tucked down at speed but when standing upright, it's a recipe for disaster when you add a cackhander like me!