PontiacBonnevilleClub.com

During the final Bonneville -vs- Bonneville race at Woodburn at WCBF, I lost the chrome trim strip (apparently a part called the "reveal molding") that goes between the top of the windshield and the roof of the car. I didn't actually LOSE it, -it was still attached to the car, as the lady who hands out the track slip told me that I had a big piece of my car flopping around on my roof. Back at the pit, preparing for the final race against Ken, the winner of the Grand Prix club, we decided to simply remove the mangled strip rather than attempt to hold it in place with duct tape. While I don't doubt that duct tape would have held it, people with more track experience than I indicated that if the track tech saw duct tape holding parts of my car together, they wouldn't allow my car to race. I wisely heeded that advice, and simply pulled off the offending piece of trim and tossed it in the back seat. I drove the car home without that strip (a ten hour drive), and made a decision to not merely get a new trim strip, but to also have my windshield replaced, since it had picked up several nasty chips with tiny star-like cracks. "Might as well get it all done at once", I figured.

So I took my car to a local shop that recently did some good paint work for me, and I discussed what I wanted. They looked up the part and found it to be readily available, and told me how they subcontract the windshield out to a mobile glass guy. Since pretty much ALL the shops do this, I figured I'd be in good hands with their choice of glass guy, since they must do lots of windshield replacements, and have a reputation to keep. I dropped off my car last Friday, and Heidi picked it up when it was done, since I was at work.

I drove the car on Sunday, and knew immediately that something was very wrong. At first I thought one of my windows was down, from the whooshing noise of air coming in the car. But also, I could hear the engine compartment, as if the engine were sitting in the passenger seat. Something was messed up. When I got to my destination, I got out, popped the hood, and took a look. What I saw horrified me. On the passenger half of the car, the bottom of the windshield was bowed outward, creating a nearly one-inch wide gap at the bottom of the windshield, that the installer had seen fit to fill in with thick, black, urethane caulking sealant. GOBS of it. From inside the car, if I reached my hand over the dashboard to where it meets the windshield, I could feel a solid half-inch or more of sealant gooped up to fill in the gap. It was horrific. Worse, the sealant was glueing the windshield directly to the plastic cowling in the engine bay -a part that is supposed to be removable! This was awful! Pics of the butcher-job:

The far passenger side; this area is about an inch thickness of sealant.


It tapered to a point at the driver-side wiper stop.


On Monday morning I took my car to a *different* body shop (we'll call this one "expensive shop" that does really good work.) I had a guy from expensive-shop look at my windshield and give me his informal opinion on the quality of the install and workmanship. Then I took my car to my Pontiac dealer's body shop, and asked their body shop guy his opinion of the quality of the install and workmanship. Both places had the same reaction: Neither had ever seen an install done so badly, that something was probably wrong with the windshield to begin with, and that it should never be done like that. Furthermore, the brand name of the window glass company was "YBBG" and none of us had ever heard of that before. (Turns out it is the Foshan Apex Auto Glass Co. Ltd. in China.) They all recommended that I ask for a PPG windshield when I get it re-done.

Finally I took it to the shop where I had it installed. I asked the owner to take a look at it, and even HE said it was unacceptable, and that the windshield looked deformed, unsafe, and neither did he recognize the YBBG brand. So we were all in agreement, my windshield job got BUTCHERED. He called his glass guy. I sat and listened while he told the glass guy how unacceptable this was. The glass guy clearly said something in reply, and at that point he gave the phone to me. Window guy tells me that my car must have been wrecked before because he couldn't get his windshield to fit my car properly, so he sealed it in with a bead of sealant. (Understatement of the year.) He insisted this was completely safe and okay. I told him how not okay it was, and how I had wind and engine noise howling through my car. He said "Oh that just means there's still a gap somewhere, I can seal it with more sealant and seal it right up." I told him not to come near my car with any more sealant. As it happens, he's right, my car had been damaged on that side of the car, twice. Both times it was repaired by my insurance company (Farmers) at one of their direct-repair member shops (expensive-shop mentioned previously, actually) and therefore carry a lifetime warranty on the work. But if window-guy was correct and my window opening wasn't squared up, -then how come the previous windshields fit in there just fine without a buttload of sealant? I told him I'll look into his claim that the windshield opening was out of square.

I called my insurance company, and they immediately agreed to meet me this morning at expensive-shop, their authorized direct-repair shop. The insurance guy authorized having the body shop laser-dimension the car to see if it was out of square at all, the shop agreed to correct any defects if there were any, and then we'd have their auto glass contractor put a PPG windshield in it, and remove all the black goop. I'd also need another new chrome reveal molding, since glass-guy glued it in place.

Around 4:00pm I got a call. My car didn't need any straightening, their glass contractor removed the old windshield and all of the sealant, put in a PPG windsheild, and installed it perfectly, no problem. Their diagnosis: "That YBBG windshield was garbage." Later I talked to the lady that owns their glass company and she informed me the YBBG windshield is Chinese-made, and that the Chinese windshields have very poor quality.

I had one final surprise when I picked up my car this evening. I was picking up my car after-hours, so I had them leave my car in their lot with the keys locked in the car under the floormat. When I got to it, there was a plastic bag tied to my sideview mirror. I checked it out and found THIS:

That's the massive strip of sealant the window-guy had used. It weighs 10.7 ounces! Tomorrow I am going to go back to the shop where window-guy put in that windshield, show them the correctly installed new windshield and the rope of sealant their window-guy had used, and ask them for a refund.

I'm just glad my car is all back to normal, that was a harrowing couple of days!

Wow......

I had a similar windshield fiasco a few years back, except the used a 'generic' windshield moulding that did not match the car and broke off piece by piece revealing the brass support embedded in the mouding itself.

Thankfully early this summer the windshield took a foul ball at the local baseball park on the passengers side necessitating a replacement.
I took it to the GM dealer this time and got the 'real deal'.

Hope you have minimal hassles with the refund.

Glad to hear all is well. My windshield moulding is installed upside down, so it sticks out way too far. It doesn't leak, but it's annoying as heck.

Really makes you want to buy a Chinese car doesn't it.

Cheap, reliable and fast..........you only get one.

Good Grief Bugsi...

I have had a couple of windshields replaced... Last one was on the 95 Transport.. The windshield I had come to find out was not a factory one to begin with and was a poorly installed unit to begin with.. The Guy who installed my new windshield went around and made all of the corrections for any issues he saw and then installed the windshield properly.. I now have now wind or water leaks..

But, The guy who did your windshield needs to be fired..

Got a full refund today, no hassles.
I chose to just overwhelm them with evidence. I'd taken many photos of the butcher job the installer did, and I had printouts of them. I had the 10.5 ounces of sealant the new window company removed. I had the opinions of two other body shops, and I had the fact of the new windshield properly installed in the car.

I also bit my lip (figuratively) and treated the husband-wife owners of the body shop with kindness and respect, despite that I really felt like jumping up and down on their counter while screaming at them. They didn't do the work, their subcontractor mobile glass guy did. But my payment was to them, so the refund I sought should also be from them.

When I showed up they were with another customer, and they asked me what ultimately happened with my car. I told them I had it taken care of, and asked them if they have a few minutes to talk about it, or if they were with another customer, and they *were* with another customer, so I told them I could wait until they were done.

The wife finally showed up to talk with me, so I showed her the photos of what their glass installer did, I told her how their glass guy said his windshield wouldn't fit because my car was damaged, I told her how my insurance company paid another shop to dimension out the car, and that it was fine, and how I had their window person perfectly install a PPG windshield and remove the 10.5 ounces of sealant her guy had put in. I told her how her guy offered to put more sealant in my car to seal up the gaps, and how I declined having him touch my car again. With that, she asked what I was looking for from her, and I just handed her the receipt from what my wife paid her when she picked up my car, and I told her I'd just like a refund for what they'd done. She *immediately* agreed, no questions asked, and we went inside where she wrote me a check. I even gave her the card of the window installer that put the PPG window into my car. *heh*

She said they've used this guy for glass for four years and have NEVER had a problem with any windshield he's ever installed, but from looking at what he did to my car, I just can't believe that this guy could possibly have been installing windshields that long. Oh well, the real lesson to be learned here is to check for references of a glass shop first, and insist on a good brand of windshield, like PPG. I didn't do that, and was just relying on the body shop to have someone good that they trust.

Nice to hear that customer service still exists these days! And good to hear that they responded well to being polite instead of being hostile.

Definitely cheaper for them to eat the cost of your new windshield than to let you go dissatisfied.

LeSabre in Buffalo wrote:...good to hear that they responded well to being polite instead of being hostile.

While not getting hostile goes against my human nature, I've found in life that getting hostile pretty much never helps. Instead I tried to put myself in the shoes of a couple trying to earn a living running a body shop and occasionally having a subcontractor do a lousy job. What should the customer want? In my case, a proper windshield, properly installed.

Their guy had several opportunities to make it right. When he was installing it and noticed it didn't fit, he could have tried a different brand windshield. If he thought my car was the problem, he could have called me. But he didn't do either of those things. When we called him from the shop when I brought the car back, he could have admitted he messed up and offered to re-do it, but he stuck to his story blaming my car, and offered instead to squirt more sealant in it. That made it really obvious that I needed to find someone with more competence, and that I'd made a horrible mistake trusting that this shop's choice of window installer would do good work.

As an engineer, I'm pretty good at taking a problem situation and making it right, once I *KNOW* that there's a problem situation. I think I did a good job of solving this issue, and the last piece was to get refunded for the lousy install I got from the first shop. I think by remaining calm and appealing to their knowledge of car repair, we were all able to agree I didn't get what I should have got, and that they rightfully owed me a refund. I'm really glad they made good on it, and in truth, this shop has done some very good paint work for me at very reasonable prices. In the future I'll stick to using them for paint work, and I'll look elsewhere for things they don't actually do themselves.

Its a huge problem when the windshield isn't at least 1/4 " from the body of the car... and at the same time the windshield does become a structural part of the car.. Its not safe in any manner for the windshield to have been installed in that manner.. If I was the owner of the company the guy worked for his job would be on the chopping block for doing such a poor job..

I have encountered shops that didn't want to do the job right. Mainly because they think that my '95 SSE is just too old to spend money on. They offer me cheaper (inferior) parts and recommend that I sell it "while it's still running". My car has over 230,000 miles and that seems to indicate a beater car to most mechanics/shops. When I encounter this attitude, I am less than understanding. Strange, if I took them a 1930's model A, they'd think how neat it is. But my out of production Bonne is junk to them! I finally bought the GM manuals for the car, some tools, and started working on the car myself. Now I know what's been replaced and how it's been done.

I know many people with Bonnevilles that have had similar experiences. I'm pleased to hear that yours had a happy ending.

Windshields are always something I'm careful about. I had the one on my '96 replaced earlier this year because it was cracked when I bought it, and I had to remind the insurance company THREE times that the car was HUD equipped and needed a special windshield. Even after this, the day the installer was scheduled to come out, I get a phone call: "Ah, turns out all we have in the warehouse is the standard windshield, do you know if that will work?" Wow. I explained to them no, it has a windshield with a special coating on a certain section and that the HUD wouldn't show properly without it. This turned into another week of waiting while they special ordered the correct HUD windshield directly from PPG, which I requested specially. They were going to get a different brand out of state that would have been here sooner, but I'd heard stories about inferior brands of glass, so I asked for the PPG.

However, the installer was very nice. There was a small patch of rust forming under the lip of the glass on the top, drivers side, which he sanded, covered with i'm assuming something like POR, and then sealed with the windshield. Very very nice job, I was impressed. However I did hear that the glass company charged the ins. company somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 for the job

Just FYI, not to detract from the thread, the HUD windshields just have another layer in them that helps reflect the HUD. It's not a coating, just another layer.

My dad's suburban has really loud wind noise also after the windshield install.. don't see anything like that though, that's ridiculous!
I made sure to ask for a high quality brand name when I had mine installed, i've heard too many stories like this/