1970 Dodge Super Bee Restoration Part 9 - Clearly New

Could you imagine driving your car for an extended period of time without the glass installed? It might make for a wet and bug-in-teeth filled experience. The glass in your car is designed to do more than just keep the wind and rain out. It's utilitarian--it serves the purpose of keeping the inside dry, as well as keeping occupants safe. If you're going to have glass in your car, why not have some nice stuff in place.

The glass in your ride comes in different varieties, depending on the location of it in your car. While you're driving, you and your car will encounter potholes, rocks, and unfortunately a few fender benders in its lifetime. For this reason, automotive glass is manufactured into two different types of safety glass to protect the occupants inside.

The first type of glass is called laminated glass. This type of glass is used for the windshield and is generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass. In short, this safety glass consists of two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety.

To make a windshield, the required two pieces of glass are cut into the desired shape and size, and then the cut pieces are bent into shape. To bend the glass, the sheet of glass is placed into a form, and is then heated in a furnace to the point where the glass sags to the shape of the mold. After the shaping, the glass is hardened by tempering. When tempering, the glass is quickly heated to about 1,565 degrees, and then is blasted with jets of cold air. This cold air "quenching" toughens the glass by causing the outer layer to compress and the inner layer to tension itself. What these opposing tensions cause mean that when damaged, the windshield will break into many small pieces of glass without sharp edges. The size of the pieces can also be changed by modifying the tempering procedure so that the windshield breaks into larger pieces, allowing good vision until the windshield can be replaced. The laminated plastic between the two layers keeps the glass from exploding when broken.

The second type of glass is known as tempered glass, which is used for the vehicle's side and back windows. As mentioned earlier, tempered glass gains its strength through a process of heating and cooling. When broken by impact, tempered glass immediately disintegrates into relatively small pieces, and this greatly reduces the likelihood of the occupants receiving any serious cutting or piercing injuries.

Without the different styles of manufacturing and strengthening, automotive glass would be little more than a simple barrier between us and the elements outside. Laminated and tempered glass each have different functions, but together they keep you inside the vehicle in an accident, shield you from flying sharp glass, and to an extent, retain the roof's rigidity if you should experience a rollover.

But when it comes to our muscle cars, nine times out of ten, the old glass is scratched, the edges have gotten "cloudy," or some enterprising youth used the car as target practice for him and his Wrist Rocket slingshot.

If you need glass for your car, you can find used glass, and if you're willing and able to polish out scratches and buff it to an as-new shine, then used glass could be an alternative. But if you need glass, spending the time looking for usable pieces, and then making them look as good as the rest of your ride isn't something you feel the need to accomplish, you do have an alternative.

We were in just such a situation, that when it came time to reinstall the glass in our project 'Bee, the windshield was cloudy around the edges, and the rest of the glass was severely scratched. Luckily, we found out Auto Metal Direct (AMD) is actually reproducing complete glass sets for certain muscle cars. Remember, this glass is reproduction, and there are differences when compared to OE glass. And we'll show you those differences later. Overall, we feel that if your glass is no good--or worse yet, missing--the AMD stuff is definitely worth looking into.