Windshield polishing

[Rut]

I thought I had my Bugeye windshield stored in a safe place while I was welding the body, but I underestimated the distance hot metal can travel. When I pulled it out to spend some time on the aluminum I noticed that the glass had a lot spots in it from welding. I took a razor blade to the glass and scraped the windshield until smooth, but I need to polish it and see if it can be saved. Does anyone have experience doing this and if so, what did you use? I also need to get rid of some wiper marks on my MGB and hope the same process can be used.
Thanks, Rut

 

[59diamond]

I hired a guy who came to my house to get rid of wiper blade marks and some scratches on the windshield of my former red bugeye.
He used a diamond polisher and just kept going over the windshield. He could not get the really deep scratches out but he got the wiper marks off.
The reason he couldn't get the deeper pits out was because he was actually sanding the glass off the windshield and if he went to deep he would have made the glass to thin.
So if your scratches are not to deep i think this should work for you.You just have to find someone in your area that does it.

 

[tomshobby]

Hi Rut, I have made many of those pits in glass most of them in the lens in my helmet. Of course that was fixed by replacing the lens but from that I have an idea of how deep they can be.
From that there are two approaches that might be considered. One is the method advertised for repairing stone damage on windshields. The other might be filling the damage with clear epoxy before polishing the glass. For that I would only try a few holes before doing all of them to see how it works.

 

[59diamond]

Rut,
I forgot to tell you it cost me $100 to hire the guy for about an hour.

 

[1974MGMidget]

I need to do the same to mine, but I'm afraid to try it! Some people I know have used Griot's glass polish with a random orbital polisher and said it worked pretty well. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[Whitephrog]

What about trying one of the better headlight polishing products first?

 

[dklawson]

What about trying one of the better headlight polishing products first?

The products on the market are aimed at modern cars with plastic headlight assemblies. The abrasives in them are relatively mild, about the same as glazing compound used for paint. While they may work on glass I would anticipate a lot of elbow grease and patience will be involved.

 

[Trevor Jessie]

Is this an issue of trying to save original glass, or just trying to save money? Original glass I understand, but if you are looking to save a nickle... you may be wasting your time.

 

[AN5Sprite]

I'm with Trevor. I had a daily driver that someone polished the windshield on. During the day, no problem. At night oncoming headlights were distorted in a very bad way. I had to slouch down and over to avoid the spot that was most heavily "fixed".

 

[Rut]

I'm trying to save original glass on both the Bugeye and MGB and think it's worth the effort. I may have to take the glass out if the frame since some of the rubber glazing has a few cracks in it and this would give me the opportunity to have it polished and reanodized. I also don't want to make the situation worse and I've watched a few videos and it looks like it's not too hard to do.
Thanks, Rut

 

[fordtrucks4ever]

Welding splatter causes little pits in your windshield. You will not be able to remove the small holes. You can clean up most of the surface marks from splatter not melting and staying in place. But the holes are there to stay.