Nissan sentra !exploding! Winshield

**badbadtz.carlo** · October 22nd, 2009 07:38 AM

saw this happen to Civic na 6 years old. very similar sa cracked windshield dun sa pictures. My friend had it replaced sa CASA and insurance covered the costs. sabi sa kanya, meron na ring mga ganyang cases before. mostly temperature and bine-blame.

by the way, we left for Singapore nun for short trip when this happened. pag-uwe namen, ganun na dinatnan sa covered parking.

**alwayz_yummy** · October 22nd, 2009 07:56 AM

as i know, i know 2 cases na ganyan din nanyari...but not with the n16 sentra but with T12, 1989 nissan maxima...ung isa panga while cruising on the highway in a very hot weather...bigla nalang pumuputok ang rear glass...

proof nga yan na malamig talaga aircon ng nissan..kaya advice sa aking ng SAs noon na pag mainit ang panahon, buksan ko ng konti ang bintana...pero in my case, kaya napalitan back-glass ng maxima ko, kasi nabato ng "baliw" sa kalye...aka mga street dwellers.

pa-claim mo nalang sa insurance. temperature related.

as i know rear glass heater di rekta sa battery yan.. kasama sa "acc-on" yan....kahit maiwan mo naka-on yan, mamamatay yan pag-naka off sa susi.

**niky** · October 23rd, 2009 03:53 PM

Partly temperature... partly the way the glass was installed... slight warping of the frame due to heat, and pressure differences between the cabin and the outside air... combined with tiny flaws in the glass itself.

Old EF Civics in the US were notorious for exploding windshields.

**rene149** · October 24th, 2009 05:35 AM

again thanks for your inputs...

...imprefection on the glass??? ...hmmm could be, it may have been too small or hairline fractures that I may have failed to notice...

...cabin pressure is a different story... since I opened the front door for a couple of minutes the night before that would have released the pressure from inside, and since the morning of that day until the afternoon it happened the weather was cloudy and cool and under the roof of my garage.

the car is still in the same condition, and no one has touched anything with all the broken pieces of glass in untouched in their positions, does anyone have any more suggestions what other signs I should try to look for?

**alwayz_yummy** · October 24th, 2009 07:50 AM

its not cabin pressure.....its temperature difference between inside the cabin and outside...

tapos, unknowingly, ung middlevents ng AC mo siempre nakatutok yan sa likod na pag walang pasahero didirecho sa glass ung cold air...

patawag ka sa insurance agent/SA mo....to claim.

**niky** · October 24th, 2009 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by rene149

again thanks for your inputs...

...imprefection on the glass??? ...hmmm could be, it may have been too small or hairline fractures that I may have failed to notice...

...cabin pressure is a different story... since I opened the front door for a couple of minutes the night before that would have released the pressure from inside, and since the morning of that day until the afternoon it happened the weather was cloudy and cool and under the roof of my garage.

the car is still in the same condition, and no one has touched anything with all the broken pieces of glass in untouched in their positions, does anyone have any more suggestions what other signs I should try to look for?

You open the door at night, you let cool air in. Cold air is denser than hot air.

Come morning, if it gets hot enough, that cold air inside the car expands... pushes against the glass... and pow... the glass shatters outwards. This is the same mechanism that makes it hard to open a freezer door right after you close it on a hot day... the less dense, hot air that you let inside the freezer cools down and contracts... pulling the door inwards. In the case of your car, the reverse happened... and the cold air expanding pushed the glass outwards.

Of course... this kind of thing happens more often in the US, where the hot-cold cycling between day and night is more extreme and can actually shrink and expand the frame of the glass severely... and there's little chance it will happen here without some defect or small crack in the glass to act as a seed for the destruction, in the first place.

I remember the other week... brother-in-law had locked his keys in the car... he drilled the rear quarter window to try and crack it... he got a tiny crack... gave up, went inside to get a hammer... and the glass simply shattered by itself while he was gone.