I agree with your statement partially. According to NGA the windshield is responsible for 45-65% of the structural strenght in your roof during a roll over accident. However the back glass, and quarter glass are not included in the strutural safety of the roof. I looked at several web sites for information and nowhere does it mention anything about the backglass or quarter glass being part of the structure. One site mentioned that the reason for those being tempered as opposed to laminated was that if you did get in a roll over and your doors cannot open you could use the broken back glass as an exit.

Heres some info i found.


http://speedyglass.com/autoglass/safety.html
http://www.myautoglass.org/tip_detail.php?ID=4
http://www.myautoglass.org/tip_detail.php?ID=2

Also, in a hard enough impact tempered glass simply shaters, and i'm sure you know that if you are cutting out a tempered glass and you put more than say 1 inch bend in it it will also shatter. (around corners, god never do the last cuts right in a corner, i broke a few that way)

Anyways, the reason i did put filler there was to cover the strecher strains from OEM stamping. I accidentaly cut the molding around the back glass while removing it, and to get a new one you have to buy a new glass. So its going back in without it, but for it to look right i had fix those. theres about 1 mil of filler in there, and i ground it nice with some 36 grit to get good adhesion. Also, its pretty rare so little filler will delaminate. That tends to happen more when its thicker, like 1/4 inch.

Talking about glass, does your shop do glass? i mean the bodymen? I swear here we are the only shop in town that does it, everyone else sublets it out.

Grimsaviour

 

Looks sweet man. Coming along real good compared to my current project. And I know all about "roll overs" lol. keep up the great work.

later

 

No, we sublet all urethaned glass . I know there are a few shops in the area that do there own, but most don't. Works for me, I hate glass. especially broken glass!
ICAR, pretty much our only training I think considers all urethaned glass structural.
Dennis

 

Doing glass is one of my favourite jobs. ;-) We had a big windstorm here about 2 months ago and we did 14 windsheilds in one week. ;-) We went thru so much Urethane that month it was ridiculous. ;-) Also changed a lot of roof skins and did a lot of completes because of roof shingles falling on cars leaving scratches everywhere.