Best Windshield Repair Kits: Pane in the Glass

Top 8 Best Windshield Repair Kits

You’re on the way home from work, minding your own business, when *bang* that service truck you’ve been following for the last 10 miles flicks up a rock which impacts yer car’s windshield. Great; just great (let’s see if I can get the TNG clip timing right this time).

But all is not lost (except for that chip of the windshield that just flew out into the weeds; that’s gone for good). There are plenty of repair kits available to those who can’t or simply don’t want to bring their ride to a quick-fix shop. As with all of these things, we recommend you read all the instructions (yes, that’ll be a new experience for some of you) and take your time.

It’s tough to start a list like this with anything other than a very affordable kit from a well-known maker of glass products. Said to repair all types of laminated windshields by minimizing the appearance of chips, this product has been reviewed by over 16,000 people which is a very large sample size.

Not everyone was happy, borne out by the 18 percent of customers who gave this item a one- or two-star rating. Still, an examination of negative reviews seems to point to either unrealistic expectations or user error. In fact, the seller explicitly states that the crack vanishes when examined at a 45-degree angle and that poor resin is achieved when it is applied too quickly. This will apparently leave air pockets, a source of consternation for some complainants.

Most of those who carped about the Rain-X kit recommended this stuff instead. Priced ever so slightly higher than the Rain-X kit listed above, Permatex is also a well-known brand that's been around this space for ages.

According to the bumf, this stuff makes a permanent air-tight repair of bullseye-style windshield damage measuring up to 1 1/4" on the round. It's a complete kit that provides everything needed for the repair including easy-to-follow instructions with photographs. Perhaps it's the latter that makes the kit easier to use for some folks.

Here is another basic kit from a big manufacturer that uses glass resin to seal small bull’s eyes and chips to prevent spreading. Unlike most others on this list, this glass repair formula from the same company that brings us Post-It notes requires no special tools, mixing, or heat.

Perhaps it's this one-size-fits-most approach that hands the product a 3.6-out-of-5.0 star rating; though that's only a couple of decimal places lower than the Rain-X offering atop this list. As always, RTFM before diving into these types of repairs.

The company name of this product will go unmentioned in this overview, lest the repetition of its last four letters triggers some sort of NSFW filter for all you slackers who are reading this on a company laptop or through your work's internet. Perhaps it simply refers to the unit of currency in Vietnam.

Its seller says this is a new generation design with stronger construction and thicker rubber feet on the plastic tool to better secure the device to windshield glass. The auger can be "more easily placed" to help the resin evenly spread over the glass.

Blue Star is a brand of beer in the land from which I hail but, apparently, it's also the name of a DIY windshield repair kit that costs roughly ten bucks. The company's copy editor must be an exuberant individual since the ad is full of exclamation points. Full of them! Really!

The kit doesn't come with a tripod style repair tool, instead relying on single-use round cups and an injector that looks for all the world like something one would find in a medicine cabinet. Some customers complained about its design but, for the most part, folks were happy enough given the price of it.

To be clear, this is just one part of the entire arsenal of tools one will need to fix their windshield. However, we're including it as an example of the amount of money professional shops have sunk into their tools and why those facilities don't use the el-cheapo kits listed here.

The bridge itself is well over $100, with various o-rings and end seals costing extra. This doesn't account for the resin or other consumables used in the repair, not to mention the technician's time. Suddenly, a $50 deductible seems rather reasonable for those of us with full glass coverage.

Even though this product's name is ever so close to that of the actor who portrayed Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H but there's no word if it can be found anywhere at Unit 4077. The kit contains 2 bottles of repair resin, good for a couple of jobs or as a cover if you screw up the first one.

The seller smartly notes that buyers must "read our instruction carefully before your repairing job." This is prescient since the majority of unhappy customers for some of the other kits on our list simply didn't RTFM and got mad when things went south.

Names given to off-brand products can sometimes be unintentionally hilarious (witness Meidong, above) but Filba simply sounds like some sort of health food cracker, the type people named Carmyn eat before getting on their bike and riding to the yoga studio.

As for the windshield repair kit at hand, it appears to be more of the same. Roughly 15 bucks in price, includes everything you need to carry out the repair and is the recipient of a decidedly lukewarm star rating. It seems that – as mentioned up top – taking one’s time and reading the instructions go a long way to success.

From time to time, TTAC will highlight automotive products we think may be of interest to our community. Plus, posts like this help to keep the lights on around here. Learn more about how this works.

(Editor’s note: This post is meant to both help you be an informed shopper for automotive products but also to pay for our ‘90s sedan shopping habits operating expenses. Some of you don’t find these posts fun, but they help pay for Junkyard Finds, Rare Rides, Rental Reviews, and whatever else. Thanks for reading.)

[Main Photo Credit: Anselm Kempf/Shutterstock.com. Product images provided by the manufacturer.]