Toyota Yaris Auto Glass
Few things are uglier than a car with a plastic bag taped to the area where a lovely, sturdy pane of window glass should be. Maybe the only thing that is worse is a windshield with a spider web crack. If your Toyota Yaris is needing a new window or windshield, there is a variety of options to choose from.
How is Toyota Yaris auto glass different from regular glass?Glass for a Toyota vehicle is different from the regular glass you find for the windows in your house because auto glass is made for safety above all else. Even if you don’t experience anything as calamitous as a crash or collision, auto glass is subject to a great deal of stress. After driving day after day over rough roads with debris being tossed up by other vehicles, even the act of closing the door of your Toyota Yaris would cause regular glass to crack in short order. Because of this, auto glass is made of two types of safety glass. The first is laminated glass, and the second is tempered glass. You will find laminated glass on the front windshield and tempered glass for the back windshield and the side windows of your Toyota Yaris.
- Laminated glass has been used since the 1920s. It is made of a layer of polyvinyl butyral, or PVB, pressure sealed between two layers of glass. The polyvinyl butyral does not simply lie between the glass layers like meat in a sandwich, but it is bonded to the glass chemically. It helps your front windshield bear up to projectiles, lets the side airbags inflate the way they should, and supports the roof of your car. This is especially important should you experience a rollover. Laminated glass even protects you from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays. Whats great is that if it is damaged, it won’t shatter into shards of glass that could cause you and your passengers serious injury.
- Tempered glass came into use in the 1930s. It is made quite differently from laminated glass. It is first heated and then rapidly cooled to room temperature. Though this sounds improbable when you think of something as solid as glass, tempering glass allows it to expand and contract at the same time. This makes it as much as ten times stronger than regular glass, except at its edges. To compensate for the weakness there, the glass maker grinds the edges down. Similar to laminated glass, when tempered glass breaks, it doesnt break into harmful shards. Instead, it breaks into little pebbles that do not have sharp edges.