I did a 500 mile roundtrip road trip from Houston to Dallas and beyond this weekend. Completed break-in mileage on the way there, all went well....except...about an hour into my trip home I noticed a 3 inch crack in the windshield radiating down from the top right in front of the rearview mirror. At the next gas stop, I checked it and sure enough no sign of a rock chip, it's a stress fracture. . My dealer was on the way home so I stopped in there at around 4:30 Saturday afternoon. I didn't expect anyone from service to be there but got the sales manager who sold me my car to come look at it. It passed the "ball point pen" test for him so he told me to call Monday for an appointment to get it replaced. While not surprised, this is certainly a well known issue, I am disappointed that I will be going in for warranty work this early. I also hope that the service advisor will not give me any flack, the crack has already started spreading and looks much worse than it did when I stopped in there. How they treat this will be a good or bad omen to future service.

 

You are lucky to have such a good dealer willing to fix things under warranty. This is already a good omen!

When my windshield did this a few weeks after I took delivery, Global Imports in Atlanta did the pen test while I watched. When the pen did not find a chip, the service person then pressed hard into the crack until he created a chip, then denied me a new windshield under warranty since the windshield was chipped.

However, I was fortunate to have glass coverage with my insurance and had the superior PPG glass installed and have had no problems ever since. Only bad thing is that my insurance ended up paying for something that should have been covered under warranty.

 

Ah, Global Imports in Atlanta :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient :impatient

 

We had something similar, around 400 miles into ownership fracture appeared and spread. Our experience with service was sadly like YuccaPatrol's though, the SA took the car away and suddenly the stress fracture was ballpointed to death along with the rational that 'they changed the 05s and so it can't be a stress fracture' denied coverage. Had to pay for the replacement out of pocket, luckily the PPG glass is better in many ways anyway and the cost wasn't too too bad at $320...

 

Still loving my PPG at over 66,500 mile now

 

Well, I dropped off the car last night for the windshield replacement. Got a brand new MCS vert as a loaner. They haven't called me this morning so far to scold me, so I guess it's going to be okay. I already knew about the stress crack problem but did a search this morning and whew! it's been a HUGE problem for MINI and reaction seems to vary greatly from dealer to dealer.

 

Just a friendly reminder to those of you with rain-sensing windshields. If you want PPG and you want to keep the rain-sensing feature, see this thread for details. Mine's still working great.

 

Alz well. Kudos to MINI of the Woodlands. Sales process was okay, no my first service/warranty issue was handled well too. Got the car back at 4 today with a new windshield, no questions asked.

 

Mine cracked due to a rock impact and my insurance company was awesome. Now I have a PPG one.


H