Pick up a stone on the Bruce Highway and you've got a choice to make: a quick resin repair, or a full windscreen replacement. The good news is that most small, fresh chips are repairable — but three things decide it: size, location and age.
1. Size
As a rule of thumb, damage smaller than a $2 coin can usually be repaired. Bullseyes, stars, half-moons and small combination breaks all respond well to resin injection. Once a crack runs longer than about 15 cm, replacement is generally the safer call.
2. Location
Where the damage sits matters as much as its size. A chip right in the driver's line of sight can leave slight distortion after repair, so for safety a replacement is often recommended there. Damage within about 5 cm of the edge of the glass is also hard to repair well, because the edge is where the windscreen carries the most structural load.
3. Age
This is the one drivers control. A fresh chip is clean and dry, so the resin bonds strongly and the repair is barely visible. Leave it a few weeks — especially through a hot Queensland summer, where the glass expands and contracts daily — and dirt and moisture work in, the chip spreads, and what would have been a quick fix becomes a full replacement.
Why repair beats replacement when you can
A repair keeps your original factory glass, takes well under an hour, and costs a fraction of a replacement. Keeping the factory glass also means the seal and any ADAS camera bracket stay exactly as the manufacturer set them — there's nothing to recalibrate and nothing to re-bond.
If it does need replacing
When a crack is too long, too deep or in the wrong spot, a windscreen replacement is the safe and legal option. On most modern cars that also means an ADAS calibration afterwards, which we do in-house so your lane-keep and auto-braking work correctly.
Not sure which you need? Send us a photo and your rego and we'll tell you honestly — no upsell.