After a few passes at the touchless car wash, it will be known. Till then, it could be like Dad's 99 F350. Pretty simple but not done right and water rusted and messed up stuff.

 

Joe K, great you finally got a new windshield installed to your satisfaction. I wanted to add to this for anyone who might read this when they are in need of a new windshield. Having spent 18+ years in the "car world" mostly with high end collision shops but also stints as a senior field claims adjustor and manager of a large Safelite autoglass operation which included mobile installers, fixed location installation shops and a warehouse. Firstly NEVER accept Safelite branded glass, always demand OE glass, yes there is a difference. AKLIM you experienced this first hand, and yes the Safelite branded glass is manufactured in the same plant regardless of the manufacture of the car ie Chevrolet, BMW, Honda.
Secondly, safelite is a large company and that doesn't mean a thing in terms of whether or not the people local to you are any good or not. At the location I managed we did have "the guys" for various types of specialty vehicles and the team of installers worked well to make sure those works orders ended up with the right guy. Those were all the older guys who took their jobs seriously versus the younger guys just slamming glass all day …. they get paid commission, a few bucks for each piece of glass so they have no incentive to go slow from a personal perspective and likely have a manager trying to get as many people serviced each day as possible, our location was always crazy busy.
I've been around hundreds; thousands actually, of cars that had a piece of glass removed and reinstalled or replaced. All sorts of issues can occur from a careless installer or even legit accidents from very seasoned professional guys. Its a fast paced situation and everybody needs to make a paycheck.
Demand OE glass, do as much pre-work as you can, be available during the install if possible, request an experienced installer- one experienced with the type of car you are having serviced.... and keep your fingers crossed.
OE= Original Equipment. Most car manufactures have their glass made by glass companies Such as Libby Owens Ford (LOF), PPG, Carlite etc. most of the time this OE glass is supplied by a glass distributor and not a dealership.

 

Same factory means about as much as same parents. Siblings turn out different. I think the question should NOT be "Who made it?" as much as "What SPEC was it made to?". Just because say Mercedes had PPG make the glass with the 3 point star doesn't mean PPG will make it to that SAME SPEC when it is sold with the PPG label. As an example, Mom worked for StaRite (before it got sold around a couple times) quite a few years ago. The made the SAME LOOKING pump as they sold to Sears. Looking at the outside, you couldn't tell the difference. Take them apart and one has plastic impellers and one has brass. Same factory, different products. I sell animal feed and can private label products. If you are willing to pay the premium, it will have more of the wanted ingredients. If not, we have more filler. I just tell the mill to change the concentration based on the product spec you ask for.

 

Aklim. I understand where you're coming from and the story about where your mom worked. With automotive glass it doesn't exactly work that way. However what does happen sometimes is there are lets say two levels of OE glass. I don't; recall who MB uses to make their glass but for sake of example let's say its PPG. You're correct in that it is possible to get an OE glass from the OE manufacture (ppg in our example) that does not have 100% of the markings or features of the glass installed when the car left the factory. In this situation you must request Dealer glass. Here's how this bull crap works, again using your MB as example and PPG as the OE glass manufacture. A glass company such as safelite or any replacement glass company orders a windshield from their PPG distributor, the glass shows up, mostly appears to have all the proper markings and such, gets installed. Now, most car owners don't know and don't care. most glass replacement companies don't know or care either, here's why. Most glass replacement is paid as part of an insurance claim. The insurer and the glass replacement company (safelite) have a contract to use the most cost effective glass available (cheapest) and this is how you end up with a crappy safelite branded piece of glass, some other non OE crappy glass, the OE glass but not the full glass installed at the factory. In order to get a piece of glass that is 100% same as factory installed it must be ordered through a dealership. This kills the profit the replacement glass company makes due to the ridiculous way glass is priced. To add to the hassle, this glass has to be special ordered and most dealerships don't like to order glass, they don't want to have the risk of breaking it; It can take days or weeks to arrive, where as getting a piece of glass from the OE distributor is usually same or next day. Glass replacement is a jacked up operation where the general public have no idea how ripped off they've been. It's a matter of I called my insurance company and they took care of it. Never knowing how they have been cheated out of the correct quality piece of glass. Those crappy non OE windshields only cost about 50 bucks. The guy who hired me at Safelite bragged it only cost safelite 35 dollars to replace a windshield including the glass, materials, and paying the installer, so long as it was a safelite brand windshield, this was back in 1997 so it's up a little now.

 

Thanks for all of the great info. I just had to trust the man that installed it. He kept me in the loop, He had some questions and asked me to stop in. I saw the process and was happy with what I saw. He is a very enthusiast person and you can tell he is proud of and enjoys his work. Besides he was the only person out of 5 or more that would do it. I'm pleased. It's been in rainstorms and I've pressure washed it at the local car wash. No problems. He told me if I ever had any he would do his best to make it right. Anyway here is the branding on the glass he purchased. Good?

 

Joe K Good you found "the Guy" in your area, also nice to know there are still good glass guys working. If I remember Pilkington is an OE manufacture.

 

Safelite would not install a windshield in my friends '68, but found Low Cost Auto Glass next to Austin Corvette and they did a great job. [$335]

 

Safelite did my windshield on the race car. Owner called me and said he wouldn't feel comfortable sending a tech out to me to do the windshield on the carbecause of the age, and possible unknowns, but they were happy to do it at their shop if I brought the car to them. I'm very grad I did. They did a great job, even straightened up the trim and painted it.

They gave it that extra touch, and I will be back to them with the 85 I just bought, and they will do the windshield on the Chumpcar we are building.