Windscreen Fixed!

When I bought the Stylus, one of its issues - one of its many issues - was a chip in the screen. I didn't worry about it, it's an Elan screen, so easy to get & now available heated, I had a heated one in the Fury & it was worth the extra.

There was a large chip with a couple of small (8 - 10mm) cracks radiating from it & a couple of smaller chips. It'd been like that for 5 years of my ownership, but I decided to do something about it.

There's a whole load of kits out there, some very cheap, some so expensive that they're nearly as much as taking it to Halfords & having it done professionally - I say professionally - it's Halfords.

I wanted a kit with multiple suckers to hold the plastic jig in place, there's a few Chinese ones with instructions to match, but I went for the same thing branded as "Rain - X" because the instructions seemed to be better & it was only an extra £2.

I suckered the jig over the chip, screwed the "resin chamber" into it & looked from the inside, it was a bit "cocked", one of the suckers hadn't sucked, a bit of water sorted that out. I put some resin in the chamber, screwed in the plunger & looked from the inside.

Nothing.

I put some more resin in & screwed the plunger down again.

Nothing.

On the third attempt the chip kind of vanished & most of the cracks did too.

I added a little more resin & it got slightly better, so I left it for the stated time & warmed the screen a little, then took the jig off & put one of the thin plastic film sheets provided over the main chip & the two small adjacent chips, adding a little more resin as I did it.

After that it was just a case of opening the garage door & wheeling the car out into the sun to let the UV cure off the resin, I left it 15 mins or so.

After a well earned coffee I went outside & bravely peeled off the film & yes the resin appeared to have hardened, so I left it another few minutes before using the supplied razor blade to scrape off the excess, which came away nicely.

The end result was that the chips are filled, the cracks are mostly filled & hopefully stabilised & I haven't got the stress of trying to get the existing bonded in screen out & sticking a new one in - in the short term at least.

Time will tell if it's "fit & forget" but for now I'm pretty pleased with the repair, the damage's all but vanished & in theory shouldn't crack any more.

It's gone to the extent that my phone really struggled to focus on it & that's good enough for me.