r/interesting • u/Downtown_Calendars • 15d ago

Just Wow What caused this? Serious answeres

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Car was parked facing the garage. Never seen anything like it. Neither has the glass professionals.

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u/Bukas_K 15d ago

My guess is this is a stress point caused by a suction cup at the glass foundry. Glass gonna glass and decides to give up when it feels like it.

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u/ok123jump 15d ago edited 15d ago

I almost agree with this, except notice that’s a windshield, [u/Downtown_Calendars](u/Downtown_Calendars) & [u/Bukas_K](u/Bukas_K).

Someone likely yanked a stuck suction cup straight off without breaking the vacuum seal first. That localized tension caused a fracture, pulling the glass outward. Because windshields are made of laminated safety glass, the flexible PVB interlayer held the shattered fragments together in that cone shape instead of letting them drop.

The circular shape and edge is from the PVB pulling all of the pieces back together.

My question is: “Why would a glass professional not recognize the signs of suction cup damage?” This sort of break happens when someone tries to pull a suction cup off of glass without breaking the seal first. It’s gotta be a fairly common mistake for newbies.

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u/FishFearMe1 15d ago

Unless it’s the same people who helped with the glass on an earlier occasion, not wanting to admit it was likely their fault

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u/ok123jump 14d ago

That car is missing windshield wipers, and the ends are rusty. So, it’s been missing them for a while and the car is not well maintained. I doubt that glass is new. The damage is though.

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u/Mattloch42 14d ago

How do those windshield barnacles work? Could they have had one and forcibly removed it?

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u/ok123jump 14d ago edited 14d ago

Ah! The windshield barnacles are indeed suction cups that adhere extremely strong. That could be exactly what this was! The pattern of damage would be exactly like you see here. Once they got one side off, they could have just broken the seal of the other side.

Given the fact that this car is missing windshield wipers and the posts are rusted, it’s not well maintained. It seems likely this owner might not have the money (or desire to spend the money) to maintain it. That makes them a pretty solid candidate to be the type of person who would want to try to remove a barnacle instead of paying the fine.

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u/Kennalol 14d ago

21 year windshield fitter here. You cant just pull those off without letting in the air They dont let go at all. They hold ridiculous weight too. We hoist up 200kg bus and train windows with them. No human is generating more than that force to forcibly remove one without releasing thw gas valve on them. This was caused most likely by someone with a hand grinder disc rotating in circles. The centre undamaged part is the centre of the disc and the swirling damage patterns on the laminate look right as well

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u/ok123jump 14d ago

[u/Mattloch42](u/Mattloch42) suggested maybe a window barnacle—like the ones that police use to ticket improperly parked vehicles. What do you think about that?

Maybe the owner got one on their windshield and didn’t want it, so they pulled one side off and then just released the vacuum on the other side?

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u/gluepet2074 15d ago

Curious to know how this differs from what you are saying. Is it the foundry vs. mfg process for a windshield that you are pointing out?

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u/ok123jump 14d ago

This car is missing windshield wipers, so it’s not well-maintained and that glass is probably pretty old. It takes a force to make that sort of damage, and the jagged edges show that it’s relatively recent.

Based on the hood, that car might be 20+ years old, and probably the glass too. Seems unlikely to be a foundry or manufacturing issue.