As far as safety concerns and customer service goes, as a civic Si owner I am very unhappy, about a week ago I was driving down a road in my small hometown, It was a little cold out but nowhere near freezing. I decided to turn on my rear window defroster so that my view would be clear to see other vehicles in my surrounding area when I heard a loud POP in the rear of my vehicle. As you can imagine I was a bit shaken up only to find out that the heating element from my window defroster had caused my back window to shatter completely. So I made the issue known to Honda locally and even took the time to pose it as a safety issue to corporate at American Honda and I was rudely shrugged aside by a representative by the name of Keisha and was given no help what so ever. In fact I was told to get my insurance company involved for Hondas own manufacture defect. On top of all of this matter I realized that there were plenty of other newer model Civics in my area that are used as family cars. By the grace of god I didn't have any infants in my back seat, and for that matter I would have loved to have heard Honda's resolution to something of that nature.
the rear defrost is timed to allow proper cooling in between, even if it is a manufacturere defect goodluck proving it because hundreds of thousands of these cars have been running since 2006 with out this problem.
water may have dropped onto your rear window while driving and cracked it.
even if it was touched by water it rear window dosent get THAT hot. i dont think.. i do know that a while ago i was drivng and i saw a spark go off from my rear view mirror kinda scared me :shrug:
a rear defroster would not make the window shatter unless the window was already damaged.... like a small or large crack... or maybe a rock got kicked up by a car going by you at the exact same time you hit the defrost button. Or a dumbass punk shooting a bb gun.
there wasn't a single car around me, fields on both my right and left hand side, the two contact points of the heating element actually burnt through the flat black border of the underside of the window that comes from the factory.
Tempered glass can be very touchy, yet an amazing feat. Over the years I have heard of this type glass breaking by closing the opposite side car door, and also sunroofs shattering, but at the same time there is a 2.5' x 6' glass in the front door at work that took a blow from a chunk of concrete and only has a scar from it.
The burnt area does sound strange though do you have documentation you could present to Honda ?? Once out of the 3/36 it is hard to get Honda to budge.
It was a really small meteorite that made the trip through the atmosphere. JK. I really don't think the heating element could break the window. Something had to have hit it or it was already damaged before it finally shattered. Sorry about your luck.
yea that sounds kinda iffy unless u changed the rear window before as it happened to me in my fathers infiniti qx56 i put on the front defroster and the windshield popped (aftermarket windshied) and i had a crack on the bottom but as far as shatter that sounds unusual
My mom had left her Defroster on before when it was in the spring, worst thing that happened was the glass looked a little funny.
Now did your glass shatter into millions of pieces or is it intact but shattered.
If its shattered to a million pieces I'd say foul play maybe. If it remained whole then there might be fault in the electrical system. But even then do the defrosters even get that hot? Ive put hot pots onto some tempered glass with no problem in the past.
could it be possible that it shorted, or something fried sending all the power to the element at once (making it super-heat) because im willing to bet if that window went from cold to hot REALLY fast it'd pop
I'll post more pics when i get home that'll settle all the unanswered questions, you guys wouldnt believe what i found when the glass was being removed there was heat damage to the rear pilar!
Honda rep said the same thing to me, but I raised hell and dropped it off at their dealership the next day.. they fixed some other window defect I had under warranty but did nothing about the windshield and said they couldn't because they would have to order in and a bunch of other excuses(?).. ended up taking it to a local shop and got it fixed , still dealing with the insurance claim and stuff . Sigh
This all sounds nucking futz. I've herd and seen subwoofers blow windows b4. But nothing like this. Im anxious to see the pics the op has. Sorry bout your luck man. Hope it gets worked out
One of my friends had this happen to him in his integra. He was just driving along in the morning with his defrosters and his rear hatch's glass just shattered. It's not IMPOSSIBLE, but it doesn't happen all that often.
Same thing happened to me with my 7th gen a few years back, the glass looked exactly like Lyfe's. It was the summer time, the car was parked and not even turned on. No foriegn objects found in the car, just a bunch of shattered glass. I took some pics with my old phone but they are long gone, should have kept them. I was pissed!!!
wow, I have never heard of this happening before....
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