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I just noticed that the windshield in my 2013 Forester is showing pitting at just 7500 miles.
It seems these windshields are prone to pitting. Are they soft of just cheap?
I put 220,000 on my 1996 Outback, and it had nary a crack in it, even with 23 (if I recall correctly) noticeable chips.
Our Subies have been OK. The 626 we owned broke twice.
With nearly twice as many miles, I just don't see how what's happening to the Forester windshield can be pinpointed to anything other than poor quality.
But, even in the cases of exploding windows that I've read about, manufacturers will not cover them under warranty. The whole plausible deniability thing. Insurance will likely cover, but then you have to decide whether you want to put yourself on their watch list over something like that. :sick:
besides windshield, the forester runs very well.
I'm retiring my old high-mileage OB and am ready to buy another Subie, maybe a Crosstrek which has very efficient use of space and fits nicely into my space-compromised 2/c garage. Not sure I can do this with all these stories of owners replacing windshields, some multiple times, with no satisfaction from Subaru. It's not a new subject either.
I like these cars but the company seems to put people through the mill with issues they are slow to correct. I just might get the new Mazda 3 hatchback with 2.5 engine and dedicated winter tires. They added some ground clearance, nothing like the Crosstrek, but higher nonetheless.
I think we've put about 17,000 miles on the car since then, and after countless rocks and hail stones (we were driving at the time and some of them actually dented the car's sheet metal) hit the screen, we finally picked up our first chip less than a week ago. But, it was just that: a small chip. My wife plans to have it "fixed," but, with the old screen, that chip would have turned into a crack all the way across the glass by now.
I think someone mentioned that the glass was "soft." It's actually the opposite: The the stock glass hard and thin, which means it is brittle.
You are better off having a higher collision deductible and a lower (other than collisions) deductible for things like a cracked windshield.
It took them about two hours from the time I dropped it off until it was ready for pick up. That was June. Today, I have a nice chip along the bottom and, yes, it is cracked from side to side. Still haven't picked up a crack in my Fiesta windshield, despite being the smallest car on the road and constantly getting peppered by pea gravel by all the pickups.
I've had a 13 Legacy for 2 weeks, I noticed a chip on delivery, and they replaced the windshield last Friday. This morning a rock hits and instantly another chip all the way through. My Saab had been making the same commute for 139k and not one chip.... Is it the windshield? Is it the angle of the windshield?
Sometimes it is just luck of the draw, but I strongly suspect that Subaru's glass is just uncommonly brittle.
Got it replaced for $285.25, including installation and the rubber gasket that seals the windshield. I think Subaru needs to own up to their crappy windshield glass. I expected a lot better quality from them, and a lot better customer service when the quality is sub par.
I now have a PGW brand windshield. We'll see how well this holds up. I am really pissed at how Subaru dropped the ball on this. Why did I get the warranty if it doesn't cover replacing poor quality parts?
On a side note, I found a great auto glass place. They will be getting my business again to replace a cracked '82 Chevy C10 windshield (cracked more than a decade ago, but doesn't impede vision). So I got that going for me, which is nice.
Silver linings!
Our replaced windshield on the '10 Forester, which was done last June (almost exactly a year ago), has a plethora of cracks in it already. Thankfully, they are all doing an elaborate dance along the bottom of the screen, so it does not impede vision. But, there are so many of them that the distance between several of the cracks are actually delaminated. I can see the resulting translucence from outside the car.
I hate to say this, but this screen is actually holding up better than the last one. We have several pits in it that are decently sized and yet no cracks stemming from them. The OEM cracked with the slightest provocation. The problem is that my wife simply had a string of bad luck as far as taking rocks. we only have 20K miles on it since the last replacement, yet we really should do it again. I don't have it on the maintenance schedule until June 2017.... !
We just received our first full-on crack in windshield #3 on our 2010 Forester. I feel like we did pretty well this time, having gone a full seven months and about 9,000 miles since installing it. /sad
Sometimes I wonder if all these cracks have anything to do with car tires getting wider and wider, and more trucks and SUVs on the road with no mudflaps.
But, for mudflaps?! Yes! Not just those vehicle types, but, I think, any vehicle that exposes over a third of the tire's height directly to the vehicles behind them. The days of long rear overhangs are behind us (no pun intended!).
Also, the propensity of ADOT to use gravel on the roads. They use something like E-chip, which can include some pretty big stones, and tires pick them up very effectively.
We have had our Forester for 7.5 years now, and have replaced the windshield twice. Both times, it was heavily cracked by the time we finally put new glass in there. It is usually a split that threatens to obscure driver vision that gets me to take the plunge. We went four years and then three years, so I'm hoping we can make three years the norm now (and not keep shortening the interval!).
I usually replace the windshield on ours every three years or so, but we don't make it more than a few months (perhaps a year if lucky) without a crack. Ours are all initiated by rock strikes. Quite annoying to need to replace it so often, but just the cost of driving.
Surprisingly, my Q7 has made it three years with no cracks. I have some rock strikes, but they tend to take more to cause a crack, and none so far have run from their localized point of impact. I did take that one in to seal a few of the larger strikes a couple years ago just because replacing that one is about 4x the cost of replacing the glass on the Subaru.