Oops, opened up that can o worms today. The FX has been off the road in the garage since discovering with all the Thanksgiving rains that there is a leak up top and front. This one is bad because it drips onto the seat and your left thigh if your seated inside. So today I decided to pop the trim to take a look at the top edge of the windscreen. Amazingly the windscreen trim clips are still holding well and it took quite a bit of convincing. I got the top edge off, and then the passenger side. There was a lot of collected crap, and some hidden rust developing. Yuck. So I started on the drivers side. The upper corner, where the suspected leak is, there was a lot of sealant goop in the trim edge groove. Hm, wonder what went on there. The left edge trim is proving stubborn, the clips seem to be imbedded in a lot of goo. The first clip finally starts to work loose.
Check out my crack
Doh! Dammit, the windscreen cracked! Cr#p! Just when I finished my custom Luxeon Star high mount brake light and thought I’d be ready for safety check! Now I have to replace the windscreen. And if I’m going to do that, I might as well tackle the rust in the frame since it would be stupid to attempt removal & installation of windscreen twice. At least now I think I know the source of the leak. The goop seal at the top left corner seems to be bad. If I wiggle the corner of the glass I can see it moving, which probably contributed to causing the crack as I pulled at the trim.
Call goes out to the kustom boys, time for some challenging metal working! I’ve seen Scat do some pretty nice metal forming with nothing more than a tin snip and a hammer. Let’s get crackin!
Looks like you’re already doing pretty good by yourself with the “crackin'” part! Can you source a windscreen from the other FX carcass?
Yeah, that was my plan for a while. It actually is a new windscreen that was installed shortly before I got it so it is in great shape. The current FX windscreen, has a number of large chips already, and well the crack sealed its fate. Question is, can I remove the spare safely?
Maybe call the professionals on this one. At least invest in the special L-shaped cutter an practice on the cracked one. Removing a windscreen is one thing – removing a windscreen and being able to reuse it is another!
Yup. I told someone else asking about cheap places to have a windscreen removed, I could do it for free, but it’d be in a million pieces! I wonder how much the inductive windshield remover costs. Bucks I’m sure.