Glass and Windshield Replacement in Lake Forest, CA

A windshield or window that leaks after replacement almost always went into an opening that was never checked. Coach openings distort. The body flexes, a previous impact tweaked the frame, or a hundred and twenty hot to cold cycles have set the fiberglass slightly out of plane. Glass is flat or curved to a fixed shape and it cannot accommodate an opening that is not.

So the first step after removal is measurement. Diagonals across the opening tell you whether it is square. A straightedge and feeler gauge tell you whether the mating flange is flat or has a high spot. On a Class A windshield the center post and the corner radii get checked against the replacement glass before it is set, because discovering a fit problem after the urethane is applied is an expensive way to learn.

Where the opening is out of tolerance, it gets corrected. That may be as simple as dressing down a hardened old bead that nobody removed, or as involved as repairing a corner that has been distorted by an impact. Setting new glass onto an uncorrected opening produces a leak on a schedule, and the second attempt costs the same as the first.

Larger motorhomes typically carry a two piece windshield either set into a rubber gasket with a locking filler strip, or bonded directly to the body with urethane. The two are not interchangeable and the coach was designed around one of them.

Gasket set glass depends entirely on the gasket. A hardened, shrunken gasket will not seal regardless of how carefully the glass goes in, and a large share of the leaks we see are attempts to fix an old gasket with sealant squirted into the lock strip channel. New glass gets a new gasket, and the locking strip is set with the correct tool rather than forced.

Urethane set glass is a bonding operation with a real safety dimension, since bonded glass contributes to structure. It needs the correct primer on both the pinchweld and the glass frit, the correct bead height and profile so the glass sits at the designed setback, and a proper cure before the vehicle is moved. That cure time is not a suggestion. A coach driven out too early flexes the fresh bond and produces a leak that will not be traceable later.

Most coach side windows are framed units clamped through the sidewall with an inner ring, bedded in butyl tape. The failure mode is nearly always the butyl and the clamping, not the glass. Butyl hardens and shrinks with age and ultraviolet exposure, and once it has taken a permanent set it no longer fills the gap the wall movement opens up.

Resealing means removing the unit completely, cleaning both the frame and the wall opening back to a clean surface, laying fresh butyl of the correct thickness, and drawing the clamp ring down evenly. Evenly is the operative word. Running the fasteners down in sequence rather than around the perimeter distorts the frame and squeezes butyl out on one side while leaving a gap on the other.

Frameless windows on newer coaches are bonded rather than clamped and behave more like automotive glass. They look excellent and they are less tolerant of a rushed job, because there is no clamp ring to hide a poor bed. Those get the full bonding treatment with primer, correct bead and controlled cure.

Coach glazing comes in several forms and they behave differently. Laminated glass has a plastic interlayer, cracks in a spider pattern and stays in place, and is what windshields use. Tempered glass has no interlayer and shatters into small pieces when it fails, which is why a side window failure produces a pile of granules rather than a crack.

Acrylic is common on hatches, some entry door windows and many European built units. It scratches easily, is sensitive to solvents, and expands substantially more than glass with temperature, which is why an acrylic panel clamped too tightly will craze or crack from thermal stress alone. Fitting acrylic means leaving the expansion allowance the manufacturer specifies.

Dual pane units fail by losing their edge seal, which lets moisture in between the panes and produces the permanent fogging owners describe. That seal cannot be restored in place. The unit is replaced, and where the coach has several of them it is worth understanding that they age together, so budgeting for a group is more realistic than replacing one at a time.

A stone chip in a laminated windshield is repairable while it is small, contained, and out of the primary sight line. Resin injection restores most of the structural integrity and stops the damage spreading. It does not make the mark disappear completely, and anyone who says otherwise is overselling it.

Cracks spread because of temperature differential and body flex, and both are aggressive in this region. A coach parked in the Orange County sun with air conditioning running has a substantial gradient across the glass, and the flex of driving does the rest. A crack that has already reached the edge of the glass has lost the constraint that was holding it and will keep running.

The practical rule we use is size, location and edge proximity. Small, central and away from the edge is a repair candidate. Long, in the driver's view, or touching the perimeter means replacement. On a two piece Class A windshield only the affected half usually needs replacing, though if both halves are heavily pitted from years of highway sand, doing them together avoids a mismatched pair.

A large share of window complaints are hardware rather than glass. Slider tracks fill with grit, latches wear, torque arms on awning style windows lose their friction, and the plastic corner blocks in older frames become brittle and break, letting the sash drop out of alignment.

These get repaired rather than replaced where parts are obtainable, because a complete window unit is expensive and a set of corner blocks or a latch is not. Where a part is discontinued, the fabrication side of the shop can often produce a replacement from the original, which is one of the advantages of the two capabilities living under the same roof.

Screens are the smallest job in this category and the one most frequently asked about. Rescreening a coach window frame, replacing a torn slide screen or refitting a screen door insert are quick items, and they are worth batching with any other glass work so the coach is only in once.