Spontaneous windshield cracking?
 

I went out to start her up today and noticed a crack going across the entire length of my windshield. It starts in the bottom corner under the plastic trim and goes up about 4 inches then cuts across the entire windshield and ends in the other bottom corner under the plastic. I have no idea what could have caused this as there is no impact mark anywhere to be found and when I cleaned it yesterday the windshield was perfect. Could anyone shed some light on this phenomenon?

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Some suggestions:

extremely fast temperature change, but unlikely
defective glass, most likely

could also be something that you can't see that started the crack.

Warranty should definitely cover that. There's no legitimate reason for a windshield to crack excessively like that.

yah, probably defective glass. take it to your dealer. they will probably do a ballpoint pen test... meaning, they will run the tip of the pen over the crack and see if it catches. if it doesnt then it's defective caused by stress fracture.

if it does then it could've been a rock or something that started it (unlikely to be cracking that fast).

I thought there was a TSB on this.

The windshield on these cars is the weakest I have ever seen -- constantly chips.

There's a TON of TSB's on the car...

Yeah gonna take it to the dealer hope its a defect and its covered. It sucks having to worry about our windshields chipping and cracking ALONG WITH our crappy paintjobs lol.

I had roughly the same exact crack position and size. I paid my insurance copay and had the window replaced yesterday. Iv'e had the car two years and the crack happened recently. I heard a slight (pebble?) impact while driving but could not find any hit point, a couple weird hot and cold weather cycles and the crack showed up and also the impact point. Check along the crack for an impact point before taking it in.

Ton, is right! I didn't realize there were so many!
370Z Technical Service Bulletins (TSB) / Recalls - Nissan 370Z Forum

I was amazed as well, this is the first car I have ever had that has glass chips. They aren't divots, but they are little white dots and it annoys me to death on a car that has only 3,500 miles on it since I take every precaution to avoid rock chips in the first place.

:iagree:

Yea, on my 350 had this same issue. Just away Nissan makes cut backs to make a affordable sports car. Good with the bad as you might say.

while some of you may think its nissan cheaping out on a thicker/more quality windshield, the reason our windshields may be thinner is due to weight. glass is quite heavy, and the thicker it is..well the heavier it is. we hardly have any sound proofing in the first place, so a thinner windshield makes sense as its an easy way to keep weight down.

Bit more info to explain: Supposedly there are different layers to the windshield. A small ding may expose the lower layer and then you get a temperature differential between the two layers whic hcan lead to a big crack.

Why don't we all just get nice expensive lexan polycarbonate resin glass replacements? It would give us all a bit of a weight savings, among other benefits.

that would be awesome...you could probably loose ~100lbs if you replaced the front, rear windshield, and door glass

Seeing as it's Lexan, I imagine it would be cheaper? It would definitely be lighter, stronger, shatterproof, and apparently it's just as easy to care for as glass.

It's just that the image I conjure of any polycarbonate is that it's like tupperware.

did some research...

SpeedGlass - Percy's High Performance - Online Store

too bad outfitting your car would cost nearly $2000.

well if you're like jbtravis, a lexan replacement would lower the center of gravity and offer more protection. lexan outside of a race environment isn't necessary, but it isn't exactly a bad idea either.

Nice to know others have this problem too. My Infiniti does this if you use the defroster below 40* (happened 3 times already, the cracks look like rock-hits but are not. Watched them happen, NOTHING in front of me on the road, just turned on de-froster). Seems to be a Nissan/Infiniti thing. Never had another car that did it. Perhaps it's planned obsolescence, or perhaps Nissan just specs a weird front windscreen and uses a plastic layer with odd thermal expansion properties. Either way, just one more sub-standard material I have discovered in my star-studded first (and last!) import ownership experience.

*rant off*

Toyotas and Hondas are pretty reliable... Nissan vehicles are usually neck and neck with or only marginally better than domestics in terms of reliablity (and recently, well below some... :icon14: )

Still, it's a fun, pretty car :tiphat:

Honestly... my car is a week and a half old with 500-600 miles on it and I already have 4 or 5 tiny windshield chips. I'm talking the size of a pin or nail head... but noticeable in the sunlight. It's amazing how crappy this windshield is! Is this normal? I don't remember this being as much of a problem on my 2009 but maybe I was not paying as much attention to it. The funny thing is that I can not recall a single stone or pebble hitting my windshield... I would have heard it. They were either caused during delivery when the dealer picked up the car.. or the windshield is so weak that the nicks are being caused by bugs on the highway. Hahahaha....