Tinted blue windshield on Mercedes Benz and other high line csrs

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the big welshman
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Tinted blue windshield on Mercedes Benz and other high line csrs

Post by the big welshman »

Fellow windshield repairs guys I am just wondering if any of u have :shock: run into repairing windshield on the above windshield tint on the M/B After doing the windshield repair on these windshield the repair look like crap. There are few windshield company out there who offer a tinted resin I am wondering if the windshield repair is better looking after using the tinted resin ???? :o :o
screenman
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Re: Tinted blue windshield on Mercedes Benz and other high line csrs

Post by screenman »

If you stick two pieces of blue glass together with a clear resin you still have blue glass. I can never see a need for tinted resin. In which way did it look poor? I have done a hundres if not thousands of repairs on high end cars without problems.

Is it possible the problem was there before you started the repair? Like a silvery mark etc.
ghost rider
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Re: Tinted blue windshield on Mercedes Benz and other high line csrs

Post by ghost rider »

If you are talking about a whitish, milky looking mark in the shade band at the top of the w/s, this is caused by the dye bleeding out of the PVB layer. If the glass is colored it would probably not lose it's color, but the darker shade band is made by adding dye to the PVB which will fade when exposed to air in a chip. Adding a colored resin to the glass may hide this a little, but you probably can't make it look much better unless you can find a way to replace the dye in the PVB. I have never used colored resin. When I get one of these I tell the customer they should have had the repair done sooner and it would not have looked like this. It takes quite a while to fade bad enough to really see it, depending on how big the damage is. Once it's repaired it probably won't get any worse. This can be a problem on many w/s not just high line cars.
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Brent Deines
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Re: Tinted blue windshield on Mercedes Benz and other high line csrs

Post by Brent Deines »

We have sold various colored resins off and on over the years for those who believe it makes a difference but screenman's point is valid. Bond two pieces of colored glass together with clear resin and the resin will not show. It is much more difficult to perfectly match a color than it is to simply use an "invisible clear".

ghost rider also had a valid point. The color in the lower part of the windshield is in the glass but the darker color in the shade band at the top of the glass is in the PVB. Using a very dark resin in this area can help slightly but only if you are injecting it all the way through the glass and into the PVB and only if the color match is very close to the PVB. Better to just explain to your customers how a windshield is made than to try and stock 10+ colors of resin for those occasional repairs in the shade band and still ending up with a repair that your customer is not pleased with. It's always a good idea to educate your customers in my opinion. They will appreciate your knowledge, honesty and professionalism.

We find a lot of windshield repair technicians have been misled about how windshields are made and what tinted resins can or cannot do. A good clear resin has virtually the same refractive index as clear glass making it great for filling cracks in the glass. We also find a lot of windshield technicians don't fully understand the mechanics of the damage. Remember, even a bullseye that looks like a huge void in the glass is really just a very tiny air space where the glass has been separated. There is not a big chunk of missing glass under the surface.
Brent Deines
Delta Kits, Inc.
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