How Do We Repair Your Windscreen?

We carry out a mobile windscreen chip repair service, which involves repairing windscreen stone chips and also removing light to medium scratches from any glass including, windscreens, plastic headlamps, double glazing, TV plasma screens, office and shop windows, to name but a few.

Chip Repair

What happens when a stone hits your windscreen?

Your windscreen is made up of two sheets of glass and one interlayer film (plastic) sheet (as per the diagram below). The interlayer film sheet is sandwiched between the two sheets of glass. When a stone hits your screen, usually a small chip occurs which creates an air cavity. This air cavity is between the outer glass layer and interlayer film. It is this air that needs to be removed.

Did you know... that by ignoring that little chip, you could permanently damage that area of the screen making it unrepairable.

For best results, the chip needs to be repaired as soon as possible and the damaged area must not exceed the size of a five pence piece.

Below are a selection of the most common chips which can be repaired.

How do we repair the chip?

There is a technique.

Not everyone can successfully repair a stone chip!

We first drill out the chipped glass, a bit like a dentist would drill out a tooth ready for a filling. This cleans out the area ready for the filling process. We then attach a repair bridge to the screen and begin to turn a screw which injects the repair resin into the cavity. When we do this it causes a vacuum in the cavity and when the screw is unscrewed it pulls the air out to the top.

This process is repeated until all the air has been removed and all the fresh resin has been injected. Once this process is complete, then a clear pit fill resin is placed on top of the repaired chip and treated with an ultra violet lamp until the resin has set rock hard.

We then scrape off the excess resin and polish the repaired area with a pit fill polish. The repair is now complete and is as hard as the existing screen. Please note that with any repair you may still see a faint outline of the repair.

How does a chip affect an MOT and what can you get away with!

Below is a brief description and diagram to show you the British Code of practise.

So it is super important to get these chips repaired as soon as possible to avoid an MOT failure. Although you are allowed up to 15mm in ZONE B, I would recommend that you DO NOT allow it to get this big before getting it repaired as I mentioned above "For best results, the chip needs to be repaired as soon as possible and the damaged area must not exceed the size of a five pence piece".

Glass Scratch/Scuff Repair

Windscreen clarity is becoming more and more of an issue when an MOT is concerned. Light scuff marks made by poor quality wiper blades, ice scrapers and dirty windscreens could impede the view of the driver potentially causing an accident so the windscreen needs to be clear.

We use a special polishing kit which will remove those light scratches and bring your windscreen back to original quality. We can also remove scratches and scuffs from most other glass/plastic whether it be double glazing, a fancy coffee table or even plastic headlamps.

As you can see below, this is a typical example of wiper scratch/ice scraper marks on a windscreen and also plastic headlamps which have faded over time and then the polished lamp.