Add my Emma to list of MINIs that have suffered a stress crack in the windshield . My wife drove her yesterday and parked her back in the garage after work. It is pushing 70 outside this morning so I was shocked to get in the car and see an L shaped crack starting from the top of the windshield on the driver's side.

 

Join the ever expanding club - I'm on my 3rd.

 

rhauth - I'm sorry to hear emma has a crack windshield. Hopefully you can have it fixed under warranty.

I'm really surprised that this hasn't happened to me. Do you guys live in warmer climates where it gets cold at night?

It fluctuates as much as 40* F here.

What exactly causes a stress crack?

 

Is there a particular year/model/options that all of these have in common?

I have read the windshields getting popped with debris and that makes sense due to the rake of glass, etc and that the OEM glass is not as good as aftermarket. Does replacement with aftermarket glass like PPG help?

 

Good luck, mine was fixed under warranty, the first one and then again 3 days later. this one seems to be holding okay (crosses fingers). by the way mine was the 06.

 

I WATCHED mine crack as I drove away from the dealer after a servicing. Drove back and showed them, they said they had seen "a few" of these
and it got replaced no prob. Funny thing, it was last summer the car was
sitting in the sun, temp was a little over 100, car was serviced and washed.
maybe a temp expansion thing??

 

btw I have an '05 MCSC

 

Hopefully the pen test shows no impact point.

 

I'll try to take her into the dealer sometime Monday - if they won't replace it, I'll get PPG glass put in. I replaced the glass in my wife's '05 last October as it had a nice sized bulls eye hit on the driver's side. So far, we've been pleased with the PPG.

The weird thing with the crack is that Friday and Saturday were unusually warm here. It was around 70 on Saturday and stayed in the upper 50's Friday and Friday night.

 

I think this so called pen test is BS. We have the exact same crack in our windshield but there is also a very very small impact mark. The night we took the hit we were only doing 40mph and there was NO CRACK. It was not until days later the crack showed up.

WINDSHIELDS ARE SUPPOSED TO TAKE A REASONABLE IMPACT AND NOT CRACK!!!

I wonder when MINI is going to realize there is a flaw in their windshield structure? Or after a class action will their attention be had?

Our Mini only has 3,000 miles on it!

 

I'm with you guys on this one. I had mine replaced around 2500 miles for a crack from the world's TINIEST chip. I was extremely annoyed.

Honda Element owners went through a class-action due to the same issue. I contacted the attorneys from the firm that handled the Honda Element class-action on Friday to see if they'd be willing to take on this issue. I expect to hear back from them relatively quickly one way or another and I'll keep you guys posted.

 

No kidding!! Please let us know what they tell you.

Thank you for taking the initiative for us!!!

 

Not good! Ek! Hope you get it fixed fast!

 

I am currently an Element owner and about to get an MCS in a few weeks, here is some info about the Elements and the cracked windshield law suit. I have replaced my E windshield 1 time at 25k and its been fine since, and now I have 115k.
http://www.elementownersclub.com/for...d+class+action

 

Went out to my car the other day to find crack # 2. #1 was in the lower driver's corner & headed towards the middle. #2 is in the lower center & already headed towards #1. Twice I've noticed early a.m. that crack #2 had gotten longer overnight. And yesterday I saw several rivulets of moisture rolling down the windshield....on the inside.

 

I just wanted to let you all know that I have been contacted by the firm that took on the Honda Element windshield issue. If you are someone who has posted about having several replacements, you may be hearing from them as I have steered them towards this forum to read the various stories. It appears that they are interested in helping us out.

In the meantime, if you ARE someone who has had replacements and NOT shared your story on these forums, you may want to, just for the sake of posterity.

 

thanks ML... i'd like to know what happens with this... I just posted my story in this thread a $500 rock....

p.s. - oh and sorry to the orginal poster... i feel your pain!

 

I've got an '03. Mine cracked like that just before AMVIV. I was at the dealer yesterday and asked about it. They won't do anything for me since the car has 78,000 miles and the windshield is a couple years old. I'm surprised it stress cracked. It's picked up several gnarly chips since it's been in, and none of them has caused a crack - including one that has 1/4 inch crack through it. *shrugs*

 

At 3 weeks old, my beautiful new car was hit on the passenger side; 4 weeks later it was beautiful again.

A month after that, I finally take it out of the garage after a whole week of sitting due to bad weather, and there's a windshield crack. I've been trying to ignore it for the last month thinking I must have done something really bad and didn't deserve to have a beautiful car.

Between the repair time from the accident, and the discomfort from staring at a cracked windshield, I've only got 1500 miles on it as of this morning (nevermind the fact that I've been too afraid to have it washed).

The crack starts as a very, very fine line coming up from the bottom under the driver's side wiper and then takes a curved left toward the drivers side. (Someone out on the site somewhere had a picture of their crack and I was like OMG...that's my windshield!)

Until I found this post, I thought I was crazy. I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. I'd never ever cracked a windshield before and was worried about all my dumb luck.

I put out a call out to my dealer (Princeton Mini) yesterday...no return call yet. But I will definitely approach this as a warranty issue...and will be sure to beware of the pen test.

Thanks for such a great site!!!