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Real quick, what is your most HATED glass part to install. The one piece of glass you just hate to see a customer come in with. My personal hate is the DW1067(old Bonneville w/ vinyl top) cause the top molding is almost always glued to the roof vinyl.
1959 ford t-bird,any old fords with the many crome filler moldings.Old rocket 88's are time consuming also.Pretty much any old curvy gasket & crome job!!
How about when urethane was so thin that the glass sat on the pinchweld some DW957 escorts,DW949 T-Birds
or the worst I can think of was the Peugeot with the gray clips on the glass the would not cut out for anything or maybe because we did not have the tools we now have like fein knives equalizer express!
Seriously the worst parts are two man sets alone and any of the old Fords that are slammed onto the pinchweld they break to pieces when you try and cut them out.
Have to take the entire windshield frame assembly apart to install windshield and gasket then reassemble the entire unit back on the vehicle. Oh and not to mention partially removing some fo the dash to get to all the mounting bolts and screws.
After further thought. I realize I really don't miss the good old days when it comes to installations. Crappy designs, crappy adhesives and no cool tools to do them with.
50's and 60's corvette. Afermarket glass is twice as thin as the original. There is no frickin way to get it right. Besides the fact their a pain to reassembly.
Also the MG same design only smaller.
I have had to re-do several Safelite jobs in recent history. Can we say nightmare?
A simple FW2011 took me an hour! They fileted the molding and glued it back down and ran a SUPER think bead so as to not have any leaks...which didn't work because the *******s didn't prime ANYTHING!
I don't have any love for Safelite and their business practices but they are not the source of hack jobs in my part of the country. The installers I know fear for their jobs if rust is found to be caused by their installation. Unfortunately most of the hacks are Indie's that are either ignorant or just don't care.
I've held off on this one,,, but now I will say, any job that has been done by hacks, ags, sgc and some body shops,,, that just don't care. those are the worst. And LW, you just haven't had to fix enough sgc lowball price crap work. Maybe in your area independants are doin the worst work,,, but over all the indepenants are doing the best work out there,,, HANDS DOWN!!!! And I challenge you with that with whatever you want to put up,,,, it can easily be PROVED the ind. shops are doing the best work,,, overall!!!!! That's my belief, and I'm sticken to it!!!!!
Believe it or not, I do not like the new Ford F150, DW1551, could they smash that windshield against the pinchweld anymore? Reminds of the old escorts(dw957) and Bronco II's (DW939) from the early eighties years. First one we ever did at the shop, we scraped that hump in the middle of dash against the windshied cutting the bottom out, thank goodness the wiper covered it and was a contracters truck...whew!
xxx--I guess we are both right except for the easily proven part. The industry has rules but no police to enforce them. I could bet you a million dollars that I don't have to the written proof that you don't have. All we would have is a ****** match. I would love to be proven wrong in my area. I say let's hire some policemen that aren't involved on one side or the other (glass or insurance), just involved in safe installations. Until somebody goes to jail for manslaughter because their installation got somebody killed there really isn't much of a deterent for the hacks.
I hate the new f-150's as well. I think I finally figured out a good way to get the moldings off without bending the crap out of them. They are just about a two man set...if you get a 4x4 model its hard getting that huge glass up and over by yourself and they are most definitley slammed to the pinchweld! It usually takes me a combination of the Equalizer Express and a cold knife to get them out.
The new Dodge Rams are big'uns too and the cowls are a pain to remove!
I hate the 926's and 1161's. Stupid design, when they changed it from gasket to glue in they should have redesigned the pinchweld. If you try to notch cut the u. bed it all peels out and if it doesn't and you scratch the paint under the urethane you end up digging it out anyway to make sure you get the scratches primed, but even then the darn things are rusting out at the top seams anyway, then the reinstallation of all that urethane. Tubes and Tubes of the stuff just to paddle it in and leave enough to stick to that stupid wide*** molding which if you were lucky the olds came out ok and held shape. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah I hate this w/s.
926's are easy if you use t109 all the way around.Flush cut the old urethane with the inner dam molding and fill in any gaps with urethane.Lay the bead on the body and have two guys to set and your done.30-45 min job tops as long as they are not rusty.Saves a ton of time,clean up and money.Looks much better also than stock.Make sure you prime the molding and glue it to the glass before hand.