Auto Door Glass

There is quite a bit of glass in a vehicle when you sit down and really think about it. Everyone has probably dropped a drinking cup made of glass and seen it shatter at some point in their lifetime. If not, they have probably seen someone else drop one. The glass shatters quite easily and when you start thinking about the fact that you are moving down the road at high speeds with large areas being protected only by glass, you might start to worry.

Auto door glass is simply the glass windows that you have mounted in your car doors. There is actually a difference between the glass in a windshield and the glass mounted in your doors. Going back to thinking about the shattering glass drinking cup, your auto door glass is more like that while your windshield is actually made differently and won't shatter like the cup. A windshield is built to crack but still hold together in a solid piece. Some pieces of glass can come out of it when it shatters, if they are forced, but the glass is designed to hold together so that in the event of an accident, you don't get thousands of sharp shards of glass flying through your car from the windshield. Unlike the windshield in a car, auto door glass is made more like regular glass. It is still carefully made, with specific properties to give it strength, but it is made so that it will break. This may seem like a poor choice but it actually is made that way on purpose so that the side windows in a vehicle can be kicked or knocked out, allowing passengers inside a vehicle to be able to exit if they cannot open a door.

If you need replacement auto glass for your vehicle, you can find some places that sell door glass which has the same types of properties as a windshield. This glass has a sticky substance placed in between many small layers of glass to hold the glass together if it cracks or breaks. While this might seem like a better choice for auto door glass from a safety standpoint, the glass being able to shatter that you normally find in a car door is actually safer. Being able to kick your way out of a vehicle that is on fire, or having a bystander able to knock out the glass and pull you out, is just one good reason to have auto door glass that can shatter. Another reason is that by being able to shatter, if the vehicle does flip and the car weight is put on the doors, the glass will just shatter. This is preferable to the auto door glass snapping in half and coming inwards towards vehicle occupants, two very large and very sharp pieces of glass that can be highly deadly. Shatterproof glass may seem like a good choice for replacement auto door glass at first but auto manufacturers make it the way it is in millions of cars for a reason.

When shopping for auto door glass online, you need to search for the size glass that will fit your vehicle. Online stores will typically have a search function or a list by vehicle manufacturer that will allow you to find you vehicle without having to know specific sizes or dimensions. Auto door glass is typically the same size for the entire series of a model, unlike some other auto parts you may have bought in the past where there is a specific one for each year and model of a vehicle. Auto door glass design usually does not change until they redesign the body of a vehicle. There is typically a three to seven year span in which the auto door glass remains the same, as the car design remains unchanged. You will need to take things into consideration like whether your vehicle is a hatchback, 2-door, 4-door, or another design style of a vehicle. These vehicle styles all usually have differently designed doors, even when they are just variants of the same vehicle. You should also expect to be charged a bit more for the car door window glass in a 2-door as opposed to a cheaper price with a 4-door as the vehicle with only two doors will typically have larger doors. The larger doors require larger auto door glass pieces.

Installation is something you can do by yourself for auto door glass. It involves needing to remove the door panel in most vehicles and may require some simple tools. You can find information on how to install auto door glass at various auto parts website and how-to pages. Any body shop or automotive glass shop should also be able to do an install for you if you do not feel comfortable installing it yourself. Because it does offer protection and can be dangerous if not installed properly, please seek out professional help if you do not feel confident that you are completely certain of your abilities to install auto door glass.

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