Replacing Our RV Windshield–Finally!!!

With our carpet project behind us we still had one big issue to address while staying in College Station. That issue was having our windshield replaced in the RV after destroying it after hitting a turkey in the Florida panhandle. It is amazing how long this has taken but is an example of one of the problems with living in a RV full time.

After the insurance adjuster finally looked over our rig in New Orleans we contacted several glass shops in southern Louisiana to no avail. The only one who gave me a quote was outrageously expensive. The Hesters who pen the blog Winds of Destiny – RVLife made a comment on one of my past blogs about a fellow out of New Braunfels, Tx who travels up to 150 miles to do RV windshields. They had theirs replaced by him.

After this recommendation I contacted Texas Lightning Glass in New Braunfels and explained I would be in College Station and asked if he would travel over and replace our RV windshield. His pricing was more in line with what insurance indicated it should be so we made a deal with him and ordered the glass.

Thankfully the glass made it in unscathed in the shipping process so we scheduled the install to be on a the second Saturday of April. Well, the weather did notd cooperate as the appointed day turned out to be blustery, cold and drizzling which was not conducive to a new windshield installed. Another week passed and finally a date was set where the weather was much better.

Jerome showed up on time with his son and another young fellow. After unloading the crate containing the windshield from the back of the pickup truck, they backed in to use the bed of the truck as their platform for accessing our windshield First. was removal a beading located in the middle of the windshield gasket which I assumed relieved tension within the gasket holding the windshield. Next they used a special tool to free the gasket all the way around from the glass. This was tedious as there was lots of glue/adhesive in the corners of the windshield.

Once the glass was freed from the gasket they used 2 large suction cups to hold on to while lifting the damaged glass out. One fellow was inside pushing it to free it from the gasket while the other two lifted it out. With the old glass removed (in one piece, thankfully), they folded it like a taco and set it aside to begin unpacking the new glass. Basically they reversed the steps in removing the old glass to install the new glass. It was a bit challenging to get the last corner in as they still had to remove residual glue which was obstructing the new glass from settling into the gasket. With the glass at last in place they replaced the gasket beading and applied adhesive into the corners.

Wow, it sure looks a lot better not looking through a window full of cracks! Lightning Glass was great!. The owner and lead installer is quite a character and as he was installing the glass he was also training the younger fellows. He sure ribbed them a lot but surely knows his stuff. We would highly recommend them to anyone needing a new windshield should they find themselves within 150 miles of New Braunfels, Texas…

We both want to say a big THANK YOU to the Hesters for their recommendation…