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what are the options? [P
glass after chop
- Thread starter dutch
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Help Support Rat Rods Rule:
skull
''SARCASM: just one of his many talents.''
custom
l have a guy who is great with auto glass, he has done a lot of custom rods. including my 3Osomething, and he has a picture wall 1OX1O chock full of rigs he has done over the last 15 years.
see if there is someone like him in your'e area or ask people where they had there after chop glass installed.
Later
l have a guy who is great with auto glass, he has done a lot of custom rods. including my 3Osomething, and he has a picture wall 1OX1O chock full of rigs he has done over the last 15 years.
see if there is someone like him in your'e area or ask people where they had there after chop glass installed.
Later
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must be great having a guy like that... Is curved glass an option ?
I`ll have to try to find someone who chopped a car first.... I did a 3" chop on a Mini 25yrs ago, but life got in the way when metalwork was done and I never finished it. Since then ,I`ve never met anyone stupid enough to cut the roof off a car... LOL
Is curved glass an option ?I`ll have to try to find someone who chopped a car first.... I did a 3" chop on a Mini 25yrs ago, but life got in the way when metalwork was done and I never finished it. Since then ,I`ve never met anyone stupid enough to cut the roof off a car... LOL
Whyworry
Well-known member
must be great having a guy like that...
I`ll have to try to find someone who chopped a car first.... I did a 3" chop on a Mini 25yrs ago, but life got in the way when metalwork was done and I never finished it. Since then ,I`ve never met anyone stupid enough to cut the roof off a car... LOL
Guess I'm pretty stupid , I took 4" outta my roof & then make it into a removable hardtop (most of the time the roof gets left at home) .
Glass for me was easy ... 47 Willys p/u ... flat w/s X2 , back glass & side glass not much of a problem ... made patterns & down to the glass people I went .... 2 tubes of urethane ...done .
I know from past exper.curved w/s can be cut down .... tempered its not gonna happen ... makes little diamonds every where
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Yankee Transplant
He started out with nothing, he still has most of
if its flat you have no problems, glass company will cut it and put it in , at least around here anyway . I would just get a card board cut out and go from there .
Willowbilly3
A *real* tin magnet
Flat glass, no problem. From what I've read, when you do a chop on a car with curved glass, you cut the glass down first, then make the top fit. I know more than one person who bought an unfinished chop job with no glass only to find out why it went through multiple owners and never got done, nobody could fit a windshield.
billy
Motor mouth ratchet jaw!
what a bummer
Skip
Well-known member
That's when its time to slice it up and fit in a WS frame that glass will fit in. Simple. Right?
soltz
The Rat Captain
Who You Calling Stupid?
There are a few around here. [cl
What Willowbilly3 said, i should have listened[S Oh Well
DIY is the fun way, i'm working on #4 and still counting
There are a few around here. [cl
What Willowbilly3 said, i should have listened[S Oh Well
DIY is the fun way, i'm working on #4 and still counting
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thanks for the replies guys.
Lexan could be an option for curved..? I would never use it unless everything else fails, but that can be made to fit any curve. I`d make a dozen at once and change it every year, or after every time you used the wipers...
Pretty much what I thought. Ill be on the lookout for glass guys from now on
Lexan could be an option for curved..? I would never use it unless everything else fails, but that can be made to fit any curve. I`d make a dozen at once and change it every year, or after every time you used the wipers...
Pretty much what I thought. Ill be on the lookout for glass guys from now on
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not really for a specific reason. It`s just something that has been buzzing in my mind for yrs...
thanks all for the replies
RimSpoke
Well-known member
I Like Curves
Even a seasoned glass man is taking a risk when cutting a windshield. For that reason a reputable glass shop will only charge you their cost for the windshield until they get one cut successfully. That way you assume the risk for the potential pieces paying labor and profit upon success.
When I first chopped (and sectioned) my '56 Ford it was just a couple-of-block drive over to Harry, the owner of Safelite Autoglass on the corner of Delsea Drive and Lake Rd in Newfield, NJ. Like many others, I didn't know what I was doing, I was just doing it.
Harry went the old-school method of scoring both sides, making a couple of relief cuts in the piece to come off, squirting some denatured alcohol along the crack, and setting it ablaze to melt the laminating plastic between the glass as he broke-off the top with all the finesse of a framing carpenter pounding nails.
"There, done... except for the sides", he said as he walked around my chopped, glass-less truck in one bay over to the belt sander. I was in total awe from what I just witnessed but this is where the education began.
I'm going to jump forward in time to pictures of my '58 since I don't have any good ones of that old '56 for this illustration.
The intersection of the two red lines shows where the top of the windshield meets the cab. The white line accentuates where it meets the "A" pillar:
Let's take an arbitrary couple of inches out the cab height by cutting at the purple line. See how the angled red line at the front of the glass now shoots above the where your new roof-line is? It's out in front... too far forward to meet the cab or seal
The fix is to cut the bottom "wing" at the blue line to get the windshield to lay back. Flat glass obviously doesn't have these wings so you just lay the glass back and be done with it in that case.
But Wait! That's Not All!
The glass still won't lay back until you re-create the same base-to-"A" pillar angle in the glass that exists on the cab. If it's a 90* right angle on the cab, then you need to cut at 90* from your new base (vertical blue line in front of white line but further away at the top)... which puts you cutting slightly more from the top side towards your bottom corner. The '58 is not a 90*, but you get what needs to be done to lay it back.
Once you get the angles right, you'll find you need to remake the new rounded corner (brown curved line) at the base. This is now further up and forward from the original corner.
This is where most people who've gone this far - myself included back in the days of the F-100 - realize they've messed up big.
Look at the curved windshield from the top. My "A" pillars are illustrated green. Notice that the further you cut into the sides to lay the glass back, the narrower the width of windshield gets. It's entirely possible, and quite frequently done, to chop so much from the roof that cutting the windshield correctly makes it too narrow to install.
Add to that that when keeping the same base-to-"A" pillar angle described above, even a slight trim at the back of the bottom requires you to start cutting quite a bit from the top of the sides. Even without getting too narrow, and depending on the vehicle, you could be getting into the compound curvature of the glass - the actual corner area where the glass both curves backwards and turns down.
Even a seasoned glass man is taking a risk when cutting a windshield. For that reason a reputable glass shop will only charge you their cost for the windshield until they get one cut successfully. That way you assume the risk for the potential pieces
paying labor and profit upon success.When I first chopped (and sectioned) my '56 Ford it was just a couple-of-block drive over to Harry, the owner of Safelite Autoglass on the corner of Delsea Drive and Lake Rd in Newfield, NJ. Like many others, I didn't know what I was doing, I was just doing it.
Harry went the old-school method of scoring both sides, making a couple of relief cuts in the piece to come off, squirting some denatured alcohol along the crack, and setting it ablaze to melt the laminating plastic between the glass as he broke-off the top with all the finesse of a framing carpenter pounding nails.
"There, done... except for the sides", he said as he walked around my chopped, glass-less truck in one bay over to the belt sander. I was in total awe from what I just witnessed but this is where the education began.
I'm going to jump forward in time to pictures of my '58 since I don't have any good ones of that old '56 for this illustration.
The intersection of the two red lines shows where the top of the windshield meets the cab. The white line accentuates where it meets the "A" pillar:
Let's take an arbitrary couple of inches out the cab height by cutting at the purple line. See how the angled red line at the front of the glass now shoots above the where your new roof-line is? It's out in front... too far forward to meet the cab or seal
The fix is to cut the bottom "wing" at the blue line to get the windshield to lay back. Flat glass obviously doesn't have these wings so you just lay the glass back and be done with it in that case.
But Wait! That's Not All!
The glass still won't lay back until you re-create the same base-to-"A" pillar angle in the glass that exists on the cab. If it's a 90* right angle on the cab, then you need to cut at 90* from your new base (vertical blue line in front of white line but further away at the top)... which puts you cutting slightly more from the top side towards your bottom corner. The '58 is not a 90*, but you get what needs to be done to lay it back.
Once you get the angles right, you'll find you need to remake the new rounded corner (brown curved line) at the base. This is now further up and forward from the original corner.
This is where most people who've gone this far - myself included back in the days of the F-100 - realize they've messed up big.
Look at the curved windshield from the top. My "A" pillars are illustrated green. Notice that the further you cut into the sides to lay the glass back, the narrower the width of windshield gets. It's entirely possible, and quite frequently done, to chop so much from the roof that cutting the windshield correctly makes it too narrow to install.
Add to that that when keeping the same base-to-"A" pillar angle described above, even a slight trim at the back of the bottom requires you to start cutting quite a bit from the top of the sides. Even without getting too narrow, and depending on the vehicle, you could be getting into the compound curvature of the glass - the actual corner area where the glass both curves backwards and turns down.
RimSpoke
Well-known member
All of this came true on my '56. Harry successfully did what what he did on the first try. I paid him, and we put a windshield that wouldn't fit into the bed of my truck. I brought it all back to the shop and made it fit with a hammer and dolly... and a sawzall, and a welder, and...
Take a look at Patina's Effie:
And take a look at mine. Notice the built-in factory "visor" is gone on mine. I cut the top of the windshield frame free and moved it as far forward as I could to make it meet the glass. If you look at pics of chopped trucks around the Interweb, you see it's a common solution when curved glass is in play and it won't lay back any more.
I got as close as I could with the metalwork, also widening my "A" pillars towards the inside and, since we began to cut into the angled portion of the side of the glass at the glass shop, turning their front surfaces and gasket lip to meet the glass. But I needed the bottom corners re-done a bit and I brought everything back to Harry for a trim and final install.
It was during this trim, as I was standing-by happily watching, no longer mystified by all things glass, that a crack shot-up with a resounding "pop!" from the corner straight across the driver's view. Expletives from Harry. Shock from me. We installed it anyway and he ordered another on my dime. Three windshields later (for a total of four) and we had another good one cut and I could take my truck back down the road to work on other things.
FWIW he never added a profit to any of the windshields, charging me "cost" and then labor only for the initial cut job and then the last install.
Take a look at Patina's Effie:
And take a look at mine. Notice the built-in factory "visor" is gone on mine. I cut the top of the windshield frame free and moved it as far forward as I could to make it meet the glass. If you look at pics of chopped trucks around the Interweb, you see it's a common solution when curved glass is in play and it won't lay back any more.
I got as close as I could with the metalwork, also widening my "A" pillars towards the inside and, since we began to cut into the angled portion of the side of the glass at the glass shop, turning their front surfaces and gasket lip to meet the glass. But I needed the bottom corners re-done a bit and I brought everything back to Harry for a trim and final install.
It was during this trim, as I was standing-by happily watching, no longer mystified by all things glass, that a crack shot-up with a resounding "pop!" from the corner straight across the driver's view. Expletives from Harry. Shock from me. We installed it anyway and he ordered another on my dime. Three windshields later (for a total of four) and we had another good one cut and I could take my truck back down the road to work on other things.
FWIW he never added a profit to any of the windshields, charging me "cost" and then labor only for the initial cut job and then the last install.
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billy
Motor mouth ratchet jaw!
Ai yi yi carumba!!!
What an ordeal
Remind me to never try that at home
What an ordeal
Remind me to never try that at home
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thanks a bunch for the tutorial
I guess your Harry doesn`t travel Europe a lot....? [P
I think I`m going to have a hard time finding someone with any kind of that experience overhere, for the simple fact that chopping tops isn`t something done a lot here. Looks like I may have to chop an F1 in a while, so this sure if food for thought.
I guess your Harry doesn`t travel Europe a lot....? [P
I think I`m going to have a hard time finding someone with any kind of that experience overhere, for the simple fact that chopping tops isn`t something done a lot here. Looks like I may have to chop an F1 in a while, so this sure if food for thought.
Torchie
Well-known member
Chopping a F1 should not be an issue as it is a flat glass windshield. The big challenge is when chopping curved glass cars or truck.
One of the tricks we used to do with cars was that if we were chopping a sedan we would use the windshield glass from a hardtop or a convertible as they are usually shorter buy about 2".
There are also companies out there now that are molding custom curved glass windshields as well.
Torchie
One of the tricks we used to do with cars was that if we were chopping a sedan we would use the windshield glass from a hardtop or a convertible as they are usually shorter buy about 2".
There are also companies out there now that are molding custom curved glass windshields as well.
Torchie
Bamamav
Well-known member
Rimspoke, thanks for the detailed explanation and pics. Lots of guys get happy with the saw and welder, then find out they can't get a glass to fit unless they did like you, fit the metal to the glass. I would never attempt a chop an a vehicle with curved glass for that very reason myself.
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I saw the truck 6 months ago, and I think I remember curved glass, plus the owner told me it`s an F1... I`m not a Ford guy and I don`t trust my memory, so either one went bananas LOL...
Good tip on the vert glass !
