Replacement glass

[Dave Jones]

Following on from replying to a fellow enthusiast on this site who was after a pick up rear glass, and thought I'd share my solution with you all.
The rear glass I had was scratched & had a few grinding spatter impregnations in it & I didn't really want to use it. I couldn't find a new one, so decided to try my local glass merchant. He made an exact replica of it in 4mm thick glass, ground & polished the edges and sent it away for toughening. It took about 7 days to come back and cost about £25, bargain!! It fitted really well in a new seal and looks great.
I had also been struggling to get some door glass. I was given some reasonable ones by Drivewasher from the LCV Register ( who I was very grateful to) but decided to try my luck again with the glass merchant again.
He made me a couple of new ones from 6mm glass, again polished & toughened for £22 each.
To fit them, I carefully measured the position of the bottom guide & removed it. I discarded the rubber bit, filled the channel with a good quality silicone sealant and slid the glass into it, making sure the position side to side was correct and that the guide channel for the operating arm was on the right side of the glass! I placed some thin packers either side of the glass to keep it central in the channel. Following day, I carefully trimmed off the excess silicone & fitted it to the door. Although the glass is slightly thicker than original, it works fine & in fact, does not rattle as much in the window channel seal.
I would imagine that the rear windows of a van could be replaced in the same way.
Hope this helps anyone and saves you some money.

Cheers
Dave

[JOWETTJAVELIN]

Good tip, plus it supports local business. Only thing I'd be concerned about is having windscreen glass made and the safety aspects of it, i.e. you don't want to go through plate glass.

[bmcecosse]

But they should be able to cut flat panels from laminated glass sheet which I imagine will be less expensive?

[kennatt]

I had some cut from laminated glass but its a bit thinner,not much but enough to make the split sceen fitting even worse than it is with standard toughened.So took them out and put second hand glass in.