Pop goes the window

[rwolff]

A co-worker recently had trouble with the driver's door window on his (2003) Jetta. While driving at about 160 km/h (100 MPH for the Yanks) with the window about 4" open, it shattered. He suspects that it was a combination of aerodynamic load on a not-fully-supported window and something in the guides that could have scratched it, but the stealership claims that because the regulator works fine, it's not their problem.

He's getting it fixed aftermarket (about $150 total instead of roughly $400 the stealer wants), but he's interested in knowing whether anyone else has had their windows blow up.

 

[Nutsnbolts]

Actually, the same thing happened a few years ago (1990?) to myself and my mother when we were driving home on a well travelled highway. She was in the passenger seat of her car (a 1982 Chrysler 5th ave) with the window down just a bit and we were doing about 60 mph when the window seemed to explode. My brother and sister in the back seat were covered in glass, as was she. I was never convinced that someone "shot out the window", but she was abolutely sure that that's what happened, and swears to it this day. I thought it was strange that no other car got hit on that road (I checked for a month) even though the road was always chock full of cars. I wondered if aerodynamics, which were poor in that car to begin with, were playing a role. Now I believe they were.

-Rich

 

[DEZLBOY]

About a month ago, during the DC area Sniper shootings a driver pulled up in his BMW to a dealership (near the sniper's Maryland shootings) to drop car off for service. As he got out of the car, and slammed the door shut, the window shattered. Needless to say...everyone thought it was a shooting and the police responded as such.... (it wasn't a shooting...)

 

[TurnpikeMan]

OK..OK...can someone explain this!!

Yesterday morning i did my daily errands. Came home with no problems!! I went back to go out and i noticed my window completely SHATTERED!!!
It looks as if it is coming from the top of the windows sill!!

Now, what do you all think the dealer is going to say??

Some background, I have tinted windows for 7 months on all of my windows, and I have the wind deflector for the front windows installed!!

So again what do you think the dealer is going to say so i can be prepared!

 

[snoopis]

rwolff-
I would guess that it was aerodynamic forces. A friend of mine had a Pathfinder, and if you rolled down the window at speeds of about 70mph or more, it would get sucked outward, and would not roll back up into the top of the window until you slowed down. It would just hit the top of the door, a little outside of where it was supposed to go. I would think that the aerodynamics would be a little better on a VW, which would make this pressure differential even stronger. However I remember rolling the window down about 1/2" several times in our Golf in Germany, at speeds up to 130mph to "clear the air" and we didn't have any problems.

Sorry to hear this, hopefully he won't be finding little pieces of glass in his seats for the next couple years.

 

[Snowman]

I would say that the glass broke due to vibrating at it's resonant frequency for a prolonged period and/or at an amplitude that was greater than it could withstand. This would have almost certainly made the glass shatter in the fashion described above.

 

[OilBurnerBob]

Had the right-read door window blow in on the freeway. Doing about 75 MPH at the time with the window fully closed. Blew IN across the rear seat.

Didn't find any foriegn objects in the car and didn't see anything.

Insurance covered the window AND regulator replacement...

 

[SwimmerDave]

Originally posted by snoopis:
at speeds up to 130mph to "clear the air"

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Smoking pot while flatulating at high speeds is quite dangerous. Just smoking pot at high speeds is OK, though