If you drive a van for work, you’ll know that it’s not just a vehicle, it’s how you earn your living. A chipped or cracked windscreen might not stop you on the day, but leave it too long and it can mean a failed MOT, a van off the road and jobs you can’t get to.
Why vans pick up so much windscreen damage
Vans tend to cover far more miles than the average car, a lot of it on motorways and A roads where stones get thrown up by lorries and other traffic. Building sites, farm tracks and loose road surfaces all add to it. Bigger, more upright windscreens also take the full force of anything that comes off the road, so chips are a fact of life for most trades.
The cold doesn’t help either. A chip that’s left over winter is much more likely to spread into a crack, and once that happens a repair usually isn’t possible any more.
Repair or replace?
The same rules apply to vans as to cars. A small chip, roughly smaller than a 2p coin and away from the edge of the glass, can usually be repaired by injecting resin into it, which stops it spreading. If the damage is in the driver’s line of sight, near the edge or already cracking, the windscreen will normally need replacing. Damage directly in front of the driver is an MOT failure, so it’s worth sorting before your test comes round.
Many newer vans also have a camera behind the windscreen for driver assistance features. If yours does, the camera will usually need recalibrating after a new screen is fitted, and that’s something we can do as part of the job.
We come to you, not the other way round
The last thing you want is to lose a day sat in a garage waiting room. Our mobile team can come to your home, your yard or the site you’re working on, so the van stays where it’s needed. We fit British Standard-approved glass and we’ve been looking after vehicles across Bristol and the surrounding area for over 30 years.
It’s not just windscreens either. We also replace side windows and rear screens, which is handy after a break-in, and we carry out van window conversions if you want windows fitted into panel sides. You can see the full list on our services page.
Getting your van booked in
Enter your van’s registration on our booking form, tell us what’s happened and where you are, and we’ll come back to you with a price and a time that works around your jobs. If you run more than one van and want to talk about looking after them all, get in touch and we’ll have a chat.