Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip

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Mon 9 May 2022 18:10
Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip - cardriver99

Hi all,

I have a small stone chip on my windscreen and I want to self-repair it (my insurance doesn't include windscreen cover). I watched the ChrisFix youtube video and he recommends a kit with a vacuum plunger to suck air out of the crack when it's being repaired. Halfords sell a Rain-X kit that has a pressure plunger (with no vaccum) that pushes epoxy into the crack (www.halfords.com/motoring/paints-and-body-repair/s...l).

Any views on what's better? Any recommendations for a specific kit that does a good job and is nice and cheap?

Thanks!! :)

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Mon 9 May 2022 19:25
Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip - bathtub tom
Any views on what's better? Any recommendations for a specific kit that does a good job and is nice and cheap?

Don't waste your money, get it done by a professional, or not at all. Is the damage of a size and within the area that would cause an MOT fail?

I've no connection with the windscreen industry and currently have a six inch crack on my 'screen that I'm monitoring closely. It's within the 'blacked out' area and not visible inside the car.

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Mon 9 May 2022 19:47
Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip - catsdad

I had two old chips on our (new to us) Mazda 3 that were MOT advisories. The repair kits recommend they work best on new clean chips but I had a go.

I bought the Rain-X one for about a tenner. It comes with a sucker mounted aid to hold the repair fluid in place under a little pressure until it cures. The results were mixed. In one smooth chip with a quarter inch crack it was very successful. If you know where to look you can still see where the repair was made, it’s like a spidery transparent line within the screen. However it’s good enough to no longer picked be up on the MOT. It’s two years since I did it.


The second smaller chip had a a rougher surface and the repair didn’t take effectively. After three goes over the course of a week I gave up. It’s well over on the passenger side and not visible from the drivers side.

So it seems to be a bit of a lottery. Maybe I was lucky at getting 50% success.

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Mon 9 May 2022 20:09
Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip - cardriver99
Any views on what's better? Any recommendations for a specific kit that does a good job and is nice and cheap?

Don't waste your money, get it done by a professional, or not at all. Is the damage of a size and within the area that would cause an MOT fail?

I've no connection with the windscreen industry and currently have a six inch crack on my 'screen that I'm monitoring closely. It's within the 'blacked out' area and not visible inside the car.

Windscreen repairs are pretty simple! No reason to pay someone to do it when its more fun to try yourself.

Note that a six inch crack in the blacked out area means the windscreen needs to be replaced - the windscreen is structural and a crack there means if you (god forbid) roll the car or crash you won't have the same protection. It might also be an MOT fail.

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Thu 12 May 2022 16:13
Vauxhall Zafira B - self-repairing windscreen chip - cardriver99

So I fixed the windscreen chip! And it looks great. Definitely doable for a hobbyist-DIY'er (and quite satisfying as it feels like magic). To the person above who said "just pay someone to do it for you" I say "ha ha!" :)

I watched a whole bunch of windscreen chip repair videos and went with the RainX kit recommended in this one (www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK1kpSZpMPM). There was also a Permatex kit which is one-time use, costs about £22 which also looked good. ChrisFix has videos of using both and said he preferred the RainX kit overall hence my choice.

I found the kit in Asda for £7.50 (cheaper than Halfords £10). Highly recommended overall.

Note for anyone reading this in future that I made a few changes to the basic instructions

-before using the kit, I used a small pick and (veeery carefully) a tiny drill in a dremel to make sure there was a hole in the windscreen big enough for the resin to flow in, putting the drill in at 45 degrees to start and then turning it straight (being very careful to avoid cutting through the plastic membrane in the glass which apparently is a disaster - I won't do the drilling next time as I was too nervous to really make the hole any bigger and drilling this way seems like done wrong it could easily wreck the screen).

- once the resin was inserted in the crack, it didn't want to fill out the outer small lines coming out of the crack (which was about 1cm wide in total). To resolve this, i undid and retightened the suction screw about ten times (rather than the one time recommended in the instructions) adding a few more drops of resin, and I gently heated the windscreen from inside with a hair dryer and briefly a lighter, while tapping the windscreen very lightly. I don't know which one of these did the trick but suddenly the little lines had disappeared.

Edited by cardriver99 on 12/05/2022 at 16:51

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