Broken Front Window??? |
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offgrid
Senior Member Joined: 23 Jul 2018 Online Status: Offline Posts: 5290 |
Topic: Broken Front Window??? Posted: 31 Mar 2021 at 9:02am |
Ok, no problem, the 1 inch max size single pane tells me it's tempered glass. It must have got a little rock chip which worked through the compression layer and released the stored energy in the sheet. Tempered glass is great but not the right stuff for a forward facing window on a moving vehicle. When you replace it cover it while on the road or it will happen again. Or replace it with polycarbonate (Lexan), that stuff is unbreakable.
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1994 Chinook Concourse
1995 RV6A Experimental Aircraft 2015 Rpod 179 - sold |
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Danbill
Newbie Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Location: WI Online Status: Offline Posts: 2 |
Posted: 31 Mar 2021 at 8:13am |
I don't think the window is double pane. I have a good picture of the shards but I'm having trouble uploading it. The size varies from tiny flecks to up to an inch. Thanks for your input.
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offgrid
Senior Member Joined: 23 Jul 2018 Online Status: Offline Posts: 5290 |
Posted: 30 Mar 2021 at 11:05am |
It is certainly common to have a glass fracture propagate well after the original damage. We've all seen it in annealed glass like home windows and windshields. It's much less common in tempered glass like sliding doors, car side windows, and solar modules because the tempering stressed are so high that any defects usually result in a piece of broken glass in the bottom of he tempering furnace, where they just shovel it out and remelt it.
But it does happen. I once had a customer complaint about a bunch of broken solar modules on a big commercial roof array on a building with a tar and gravel roof. Turns out the idiots who installed it walked across the the roof picking up gravel in their shoes, then walked right on the solar modules. That causes tiny cuts in the tempered glass surface compression layer which is only about 1mm thick. Later in thermal cycling the tiny cuts propagated down through that layer into the inner layer which is in tension. Then boom, lots of little tiny pieces of glass held together by the solar laminate. The compression is tremendous in tempered glass, it has to be around 10000 psi to be called tempered. You can tell how much tempering the glass has by the size of the broken pieces. Smaller being higher tempering as you'd imagine. So it would be helpful to get a better description of what the pieces look like. They should all be about the same size from each sheet of glass too or something went really wrong in the glass factory. You describe bigger and smaller pieces, can you give more detail about size and where the pieces came from? This wasn't a double pane insulated glad window was it? |
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1994 Chinook Concourse
1995 RV6A Experimental Aircraft 2015 Rpod 179 - sold |
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GlueGuy
Senior Member Joined: 15 May 2017 Location: N. California Online Status: Offline Posts: 2629 |
Posted: 30 Mar 2021 at 10:34am |
My personal opinion is that a window on the front of an Rpod is just not a great idea. That said, those windows should not "shatter". They are essentially a windshield and should be made of the same type of glass as the windshield of any vehicle.
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bp
2017 R-Pod 179 Hood River 2015 Ford F150 SuperCrew 4WD 3.5L Ecoboost |
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Danbill
Newbie Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Location: WI Online Status: Offline Posts: 2 |
Posted: 29 Mar 2021 at 12:03pm |
I see these are older posts but this happened to us in a campground in Arizona in our 2021 R-pod 180. Window shattered in the middle of the night while we were asleep. Larger pieces fell into the trailer and on the ground and the rest of the window completely cracked. We had been camped for more than twelve hours when this happened and there was nothing overhanging the site that could have fallen on the camper. Are there any thoughts about this- is this a delayed event from a rock strike or some kind of manufacturing defect with the way the window is manufactured or installed? I see suggestions of putting a cover to protect from rocks but if it isn't a from rock strikes it seems like it would just happen again.
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BMJ
Newbie Joined: 25 May 2020 Location: Virginia Online Status: Offline Posts: 24 |
Posted: 31 Oct 2020 at 9:55am |
The flip side for us has been the absolute delight in lying back in bed and looking up at the night stars😊
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jato
Senior Member Joined: 23 Feb 2012 Location: Kewadin, MI Online Status: Offline Posts: 3224 |
Posted: 17 Oct 2020 at 9:48am |
Actually this is what we have in our 177 although everything is reversed, bed and window in the rear. After a year we got rid of the crazy curtain that was nearly impossible to open and close and got a blind from Blinds.com to easily raise and lower for instant viewing or privacy. When it is warm out we enjoy having the blind up and being able to see outside (no one can see inside as long as no lights are on anyway). Yes when it is cold, for us that is below 50 the blind comes down at night to keep the heat in. The blind is a 2x cell and does a wonderful job of insulating us from the cold window.
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God's pod
'11 model 177 '17 Ford F-150 4WD 3.5 Ecoboost Jim and Diane by beautiful Torch Lake "...and you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free." |
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StephenH
podders Helping podders - pHp Joined: 29 Nov 2015 Location: Wake Forest, NC Online Status: Offline Posts: 6288 |
Posted: 17 Oct 2020 at 9:35am |
I expect that if you were to order it, it could be ordered without the front window. I know that is what I would do.
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StephenH
Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,... ouR escaPOD mods Former RPod 179 Current Cherokee Grey Wolf 24 JS |
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mjlrpod
Senior Member Joined: 27 Sep 2016 Location: Massachusetts Online Status: Offline Posts: 1214 |
Posted: 17 Oct 2020 at 9:28am |
I predicted this very issue the first day I saw they were putting front windows on the pods. I commented on it here a year ago. It was so simple to see. I hate the entire idea anyway. Who wants a big window right over there head in bed. It lets light, and pulls in cold in spring and fall camping. Any leaks will go immediately into the bed. The whole thing is terrible in my opinion. I hope they stop putting the front window in by the time I buy my next pod, or i'll be buying something else. I'm so glad I got my 195 before this silly decision was made.
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2017.5 Rp-172
2020 R-pod 195 2015 Frontier sv 4.0L 6cyl I'll be rpodding |
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Bounder
Newbie Joined: 28 Jul 2020 Online Status: Offline Posts: 15 |
Posted: 15 Oct 2020 at 3:48pm |
Slightly lengthy, but there's a bunch to say here. My wife and I just got home from an extended trip to the Oregon coast with our 196 (2021 model, but early in the model year production with the 202 graphics). We woke one morning late in the trip and discovered that our front window was shattered - completely crazed one side to the other, top to bottom with no sign of an impact visible. It had stayed in place - at least until it was touched, at which point parts began to fall out. The calls began. Contacted my selling dealer, who expressed sympathy but said there was nothing they could do - that FR responded better to direct calls by customers. Contacted FR - who have, by the way, a system designed specifically to make it difficult to reach human beings directly. Eventually reached, after multiple calls, Meghan in Warranty. I described the issue to her, indicating we were on the road, and would be leaving on another trip just a short time after our return home. I told her I knew we would have to take steps to prevent further damage while moving the trailer, whether to home or a dealer or wherever. I also told her I knew the factory was nearby, and asked her to check whether there was any way of using their resources. As it turns out - and amazingly - Meghan arranged for the factory in Oregon to have the window replaced right away. We drove the 3 hours (5 as it turned out, due to a road closure), and the window was replaced the next day. Wonderful - and a good attitude from the staff there. Kudos on that front to them and to Meghan. As it turns out, the replacement unit was either poorly installed or has some faults of its own - that night, we had heavy rain in the California redwood forest, and the new window leaked like crazy! The new problem has been reported, I have done my own temporary repair on the leak issue (high quality silicone sealant, used liberally ), and we will see how they handle this. Also, I would swear the interior metal frame is installed top to bottom, as there is now a seam split in the bottom that was on the top with the original. In discussion with the factory staff, I found out a few things...
Since this is happening often enough to be noticed, I strongly suggest that any of us who have these windows should be loud and persistent (though polite) in telling FR that they need to make this change, and to make it available as a retrofit for those with the earlier design. |
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Bounder
2021 196 Hood River |
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