The opportunity presented by windscreen repair
Victoria Evans, director of Esprit Windscreen Repair Equipment, looks at how the company’s windscreen repair process works and the benefits it can bring.
Are you keen to save money on your external services and bring more of your repair work in house? If so, windscreen repair can be a great way to both save money and save the time off the road while your vehicles undergo repair. And the bonus is it’s straightforward as well.
When Esprit started over 40 years ago, the repair kits were initially sold to bus and coach companies and fleet companies. Their vehicles, with their large expensive windscreens were perfect for repair and so the kit was initially designed with those customers in mind.
When a vehicle suffers a chip or a crack, it should be repaired as soon as possible, to prevent dirt and debris from contaminating the break, which is another advantage to being able to carry out the repair on site.
Once your repairer has examined the break and applied the drill gently to the area of damage, the bridge is set up on the screen. The bridge is designed to work on the vertical screens of many fleet vehicles, with the large sucker and the handle used to firmly adhere the device to the screen. The moveable repair arm can be adjusted to ensure it’s exactly over the break. Once this is done, the injector is screwed into the bridge and then 0.4ml of resin is measured out using the syringe. This is applied into the injector and the plunger gently screwed in, pushing the resin through the break. The plunger is then unscrewed, drawing air out of the break, and allowing the resin to fully penetrate even the tiny cracks at the edges of a break.
This on-off cycle is repeated until no damage is visible. Following this, a small amount of pit fill resin is applied to the small hole left by the damage and this is cured in 75 seconds with the LED lamp. Excess resin is removed, the area is given a little polish and the repair is complete. The whole process takes around 20 minutes and the vehicle is good to drive away immediately.
Cracking job
The Esprit system is even designed to be able to repair cracks, one of the only systems available that has passed performance testing standards on both chips and cracks. There are a number of repair kits on the market, so why choose Esprit? Esprit has received TUV certification which means that repairs undertaken with our kit are tested to the same standards as a new screen (ECE R43), meaning that if your vehicle is in an accident, the screen will behave in the same way as a new screen – there’s no weak point where the repair has been carried out.
Secondly, you know that the glass isn’t just superficially repaired on the surface, repairs with the Esprit system bond the glass deep into the screen as well as providing an excellent cosmetic result – the screen is as clear and strong as a new screen.
Esprit manufactures kits in the UK, which means that they can normally be delivered the next day, and in the unusual event that something goes wrong, we are at the end of the phone, and can also carry out repairs to your equipment if necessary.
If you haven’t used the Esprit system before, or are new to repair, we also offer training, either onsite in Staffordshire, or at your premises.
