AUSTIN 7 (PROFESSIONAL) WINDSCREEN REPLACEMENT

The windscreen on my Box was cracked. and on the phone, RH Insurance recommended National Windscreens. I gave them a ring and explained that it was an old Austin 7. I was told that a technician would be with me on Friday afternoon to replace it. I imagined that a technician who spent his time replacing modern wind-screens would arrive and say he could not do it, but how wrong I was.
Justin arrived and explained that he was from the Flat Glass Division of National Windscreens. He usually spent his time fitting laminated glass in industrial plant and tractors, and he had spent that morning fitting some glass to a bus. (He had a scaffold tower in his van!) and over the years he had fitted windscreens to many old cars.
My second concern was that the glass in an Austin 7 is quite thin, which I had told them on the phone. Again I need not have worried as it turns out that the glass fitted to a Land Rover Defender is the same thickness as an A7 windscreen. Justin had arrived with a Defender windscreen and having removed my cracked windscreen he used it as a template to cut a screen to fit my Box out of the Defender screen. Justin pointed out that the top and bottom of the screen were parallel but the sides sloped out. Having cut out the straight sides I had assumed he would have cut the rounded corners with a trammel or something similar but in fact he was so used to cutting glass he just cut the rounded corners freehand.

The rubber surround in the frame had perished and I was wondering how to replace it, but again the solution was simple. They have a sticky backed rubber foam that is stuck to the edge of the glass and, when folded round, it can then take up a variable gap in the frame and allow the frame to flex when using the closer without putting a strain on the glass. All in all a very satisfactory windscreen replacement service.
Roger Ballard DA7C