Car windshield scratches - How to deal with them

While driving your car at night have you ever experienced blinding by the lights of the oncoming vehicles? Does it get even worse if they’re driving on high beam? If yes, then please don’t think that it’s your eyes that can’t cope with night driving, rather it’s your car windscreen. If you’ll observe closely you’ll notice minute scratches on the windscreen –either circular or in line with your car wiper blades. You may think these are small scratches and won’t make much of a difference, but believe us, these small scratches are the biggest culprits in causing light defraction and bringing down visibility; club these with grime and the oily layer that develops on glass, and the visibility level dips to an all time low. Sometimes the damages are so high that while driving at night you can barely see the shape of the oncoming vehicle, and the situation goes to a whole new level of hazardous when you have to drive with such a defected windscreen in the rains or in fog. So what do you do about this? 

Most of you may think that changing the windscreen is the only option. The bright side of doing this is that you don’t have to tackle visibility issues anymore, but the down side is of course the cost.  But did you know there is a middle path to your car windscreen woes which doesn’t require you burning a big hole in your pocket, and improves the overall visibility as well? It’s called glass or windscreen buffing. But before we get to that, don’t you want to know what causes these scratches on the windscreen and how you can protect it? Let’s find out

For starters, dust. Yes, even the fine particulate dust can cause some serious damage to glass and this when combined with a wrong cleaning technique can be quite a disaster. Most people wipe the dust off their car and windscreen with a dry cloth. This is one of the prime reasons for scratches. One should rather use a wet cloth for this purpose as this dramatically reduces the friction of dust particles on the glass surface. The best thing to do is first splash water on the windscreen and then wipe it with a soft micro fibre cloth or a soft sponge. The next step to clear water from the glass is to use a glass wiper with rubber blades. These clear the excess water and also prevent the formation of mater marks on the glass, but make sure the rubber blades are soft or these can in turn causes scratches.

Wiper blades are also a reason why the windscreen gets scratched. Over time the rubber on the wiper blades hardens and when you operate these when there is dust on the windscreen, boom- scratches! The best way to prevent windscreen damage from wiper blades is to replace them regularly. The rubber on the wiper blades should be soft, and free of any surface damages.

The type of cloth you use to clean your windscreen also makes a huge difference to its wellbeing. Microfibre cloth is the best and is the choice of car care professionals around the world. The fibres of this cloth are soft and do not cause any damage on the glass or even the paint surface. Using regular wash cloth can cause scratches as the fibres are harsh, and this combined with dust are a recipe for damage. The other thing to keep in mind is pressure- too much pressure while cleaning with a cloth can also cause scratches. 

Scratches that appear on the windscreen while driving due to flying particles is something you cannot really control.  This flying particulate matter is usually the cause of the more prominent scratches easily visible to the eye, but the only saving grace for these is that that don’t hinder visibility as bad as the smaller ones. 

So we know how easily windscreens can get damaged, but know let’s see how we can fix them. There is a technique called glass buffing which smoothes out the scratches and then imparts a shine to the glass. It works similarly to the way women (and some men) buff their nails. The only difference between nail and glass buffing is that the latter uses a few chemical compounds to attain the desired effect.

The first step in this buffing process is the cleaning of the windscreen with a clay compound. This absorbs the oily layer formed and helps remove the grime as well. Post this a cleaning compound is sprayed on the glass and it is buffed with a rotating microfiber cloth attached to a machine. This machine rotates at several rotations per minute, thereby making the buffing procedure effective. After this step comes in the glass polishing compound, this is again spread on the windscreen and buffed away. The final result is a nice shiny windscreen with minimal scratches and improved visibility.

Now you might still be in doubt whether this process is really effective and is it as simple as it sounds? Yes, the process is effective. We tried the same on one of our personal vehicles whose windscreen was pretty badly damaged and the visibility was hindered beyond compare. The final result after the treatment left us dumbstruck. The windscreen not only looked as good as new, but the fact that we could see clearly while driving at night added to our joy.

There are quite a few windscreen specialists in the market. Each one offers services from repairing cracks, to clearing scratches. Some of the popular ones are Windscreen experts and 3M.  You can try buffing your windscreen on your own as well, but then again some things are best left to the professionals.