To Repair Or To Replace Auto Glass

What do you do when a projectile creates a chip in your windshield? You might be tempted to simply deal with the chip, but there are several reasons why a quick repair is a better option. If you don't want to end up replacing your windshield, then you should take your car in for repairs as soon as you are aware of damage. 

It's Just a Chip

A chip in auto glass can be defined as a small divot in the glass. As such, you might not think that there is much risk of expansion if you simply leave the chip alone. One concern is that if the chip is in your field of vision, then it can direct sunlight into your eyes and make it hard to focus on the road ahead. But if it is anywhere else in your windshield, it is not an issue, right? Wrong. Water can get into chips, freeze, expand, and thus cause cracks to form. Furthermore, as the temperature of your windshield drops overnight, nothing more than the rapid heating provided by your defroster is needed to cause cracks to expand. The only way to make sure that cracks don't expand is to have them filled by a professional like One Cut Glass

Can You Fill Any Crack?

You might think that it really doesn't matter if your chip develops into a crack because you can always have it filled when it becomes an issue. This is once again a mistaken line of logic. The equipment that auto-glass repair technicians use is only large enough to fit over cracks that are the size of a number-two pencil or smaller. Thus, if you have a crack that snakes all of the way across your windshield, making repairs is no longer an option. All it takes is one pothole, or a constant cycle of heating and cooling to cause cracks to expand until they can no longer be repaired. Thus, if a crack shows any signs of expanding, you should have the damage repaired as quickly as possible.  

If you have full-coverage auto insurance, or you have added windshield repair to your policy, you will have help covering the cost of repairs to your windshield. Whether you have help or not, the cost of repairing your windshield is less than the cost of replacing it. In fact, you can save yourself hundreds of dollars by avoiding windshield replacement. Thus, you owe it to your budget to make repairs whenever possible so that you can avoid the hefty cost of replacement. 


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