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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Windscreen sparkle

Whilst out tonight I found the windscreen was very sparkly. It may be down to age, general wear or welding sparks BUT what can you do to improve it apart from screen change?
Dave
Dave Price

Very hard to improve sparkly screen... you can try polishing with rejuvinator, but I've always ended up buying a new screen...

I replaced BRB's screen around 2002 with laminated... wasn't as expensive as I expected.

A
Anthony Cutler

Dave,
My 38 year old screen suffered from excessive sparklyness. Added to by grinder sparkslets that embedded in the glass and then went rusty.(lack of forethought on my part). I tried polishing out with glass cutting paste which took hours and ended up with a wavy screen which had much the same effect as a fairground hall of mirrors when looking through it at the road ahead.

Eventually I bought and fitted a new screen. Glass was only £40 as I recall (2 years ago) It came in a huge packing case from Moss which had a returnable deposit of £30. The catch was that I couldn't get a courier to take it back because it was over their size limit. So I now have even less space in my "garage".

But replacing the screen before the low rays of winter sunshine (optimist's windscreen) or dark, wet, stormy nights (pessimist's windscreen) is certainly well worth it.
Guy

I've been thinking about doing this, as my screen is getting vary sparkly. Ant. when you did BRB's screen, was it much of a chore? I've heard of people having difficulty getting the seals to locate properly and experiencing leaks afterwards.

Bernie.
b higginson

I must admit that Bernie's thoughts echo mine. Please tell me its straight forward and relatively easy.
Dave
Dave Price

I noticed this yesterday while driving into the sun. I am wary of the replacement job though.
Jim M

Easy or difficult? - Well you will get different measures of that from different people. And it also depends what you expect. I expected it to be difficult which is why I wasted a lot of time trying to polish out the damage. When I eventually attempted it it was much more straightforward than I had expected.

There are 2 stages: Fitting new glass in the frame. This was scary because you have to use a lot of force and I constantly expected the glass to shatter. Use a new quality rubber seal and lubricant. Use new screws for the frame corners and make certain these are the right lengths. There are 2 lengths, don't muddle them or the long ones will contact the glass and break it. The key was using mini ratchet straps around the frame to squeeze it onto the glass, gradually increasing the tension on the straps in stages. Be patient and leave it for 10 minutes or so as the rubber seal slowly moves into the frame. Then go round again and ratchet up a few more clicks on the straps.

2nd stage is fitting the assembled screen to the car. Some find this easy whilst others have difficulty. I think it depends on variations in the body shells. Mine was OK; easier last time as I devised a way of using my ratchet straps again. I also use a credit card and someone else has a good method involving strips of tape. I haven't had any seal leaks.
(I am being deliberately obscure as there was a detailed thread on this a few months ago. It will be in the archives. I would post the link but I have never yet located a specific thread using the archive search so perhaps someone else who claims expertise in archive archaeology can find it)

Guy

This thread was discussed between 09/08/2011 and 11/08/2011

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