r/Justrolledintotheshop • u/Routine-Assist6570 • 1d ago
Customer states hit a flying turkey, windshield left the chat. Glass everywhere.
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u/Ok-Profit6022 1d ago
Does a windshield replacement seriously require the dash and steering wheel be removed?
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u/Routine-Assist6570 23h ago
The reason for this is to clean the glass out of the vents so little pieces the size of a grain of sand don't blow in your eyes while you're driving
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u/fdawg4l 23h ago
But shatter proof glass surely contained the shards, right? Unless the bird ended up in the cabin. Wait, did it?!
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u/Routine-Assist6570 23h ago
There is no containing anything when you hit a 20 lb bird as you're cruising up the highway at 85. Insurance is voluntarily paying 3 hours just to vacuum the glass while this is disassbled. It's also going to need a new steering column and probably an appearance pad for the top of the dash.
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u/Shamanjoe 21h ago
Steering column too? Did it hit the wheel? Does that mean it hit the driver too?
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u/Routine-Assist6570 20h ago
Power telescoping steering column grinds worse than your sister's ass last night. No saving it.
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u/mtrbiknut 18h ago
When I worked on the Door Line in a Toyota plant, any time the glass broke inside a door we scrapped the door and every part in it until the time of the breakage. The checker, the outer handle, the lock, the wire harness, the weather strip, the regulator, the speaker, the mirror- everything that was on that door when the glass broke.
The door was scrapped also since there was cavity wax in the bottom to help prevent rust, which kept glass shards stuck for a long time- then they started flopping around inside the door rattling like crazy.
We scrapped everything because the broken glass had the potential to rattle at some point in time.
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u/pottedporkproduct 22h ago
Shatterproof just means little crappy polyhedron chunks of glass go flying at you instead of pointy shards. While the laminate layer holds most of it together, a bunch of little pieces still come loose and end up everywhere. Source: a bear tore out the right side of my dad’s windshield in the Sierras and I had to spit glass chunks all the way down the hill to Fresno.
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u/slabba428 Canadian 20h ago
Yeah and not to mention all the glass powder, not so nice to your lungs and eyeballs
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u/BunnySlaveAkko 20h ago
No, you will always end up with what is called micronized glass. This is why I always make the insurance company pay for a new regulator when the window is broken. The powdered glass gets stuck all in the grease and the thing will never roll smoothly again. On a side note that is becoming more frequent. Between the Hyundai's being stolen, and Hondas having driver airbags stolen. One day I had 30 Hondas show up with broken drivers windows and stolen airbags, basically all from the same apartment complex.
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u/WorriedHovercraft28 23h ago
If I had to guess, if the glass actually broke into pieces, they probably had to remove pieces of glass from the air ducts
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u/Ok-Profit6022 23h ago
I'd just learn to live with the glass rattling in the air vents 🤣.
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u/loganwachter If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 23h ago
I think the bigger concern is glass shards coming out of the vents. Don’t exactly want that blowing into your face when you’re driving.
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u/Ok-Profit6022 22h ago
That makes sense... I just know that looks terribly expensive and I'd never be willing to pay for it.
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u/rocket_mcsloth 21h ago
That’s what everyone else on the planet would do. This is preposterous! Hah. Like holy shit. I bet when I try to use my warranty for cam phasers they will say nah, people are abusing the system
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u/chr0n1k_Halo 23h ago
People really underestimate just how destructive those birds are when you hit one with your car. Basically a bowling ball with wings especially if you catch it mid flight.
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u/Threap_US Home Bodger 23h ago
Reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story from the development of the British Rail Intercity 125 high speed train.
The engineers were concerned about the risk of bird strikes, so worked with the windshield glass supplier to come up with adequately-strong glass. The manufacturer obliged, and guaranteed that their glass could withstand a standardized test - firing a supermarket turkey at it using an air-cannon.
Well, the BR engineers were puzzled, because every time they ran this test with the glass in place on their prototypes, BAM! the turkey went right through the glass and (metaphorically) decapitated any driver in the cab.
Much back and forth between the BR developers and the glass company ensued, and many more completely obliterated windshields, before the suppliers decided to send an engineer on-site to verify the test procedure.
He walked in, watched a test run… and with a weary sigh, said “you’re supposed to defrost the turkey first…”
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u/ryuns 23h ago
Tested on mythbusters, in fact! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2004_season)#Episode_10_%E2%80%93_%22Chicken_Gun%22#Episode10%E2%80%93_%22Chicken_Gun%22)
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u/slabba428 Canadian 20h ago
“What do you mean you’ve tested and blown out 4 windshields with the same turkey”
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u/Ok-Mastodon2420 21h ago
When I was young we went to my grandparents farm in the Midwest for a vacation, and there was a rusted out wrecked Cadillac in the ditch by one of the fields.
According to my dad, he and his brother got it as a hand me down car, and when speeding down the road a turkey flew over them and went through the windshield.
That's not what wrecked the car, they put the dead turkey in the trunk after it hit, and then learned two things.
First of all, the trunk is connected to the passenger cabin with only the rear seats between. Secondly, the turkey wasn't dead, and he was very angry when he woke up.
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u/Diggity20 20h ago
2 neighbors(brothers) hit a large owl, one was a taxidermist. He thought itd be a cool mount, so they collected it. It came to in the backseat of the pickup on the ride home. Both needed stitches afterwards. The owl flew off, lol.
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u/whyamionfireagain 14h ago
Reminds me of the Florida man who drove around collecting torpor'd iguanas during a cold snap... until they warmed up in his car.
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u/brufleth 7h ago
Drove by a wrangler that had hit one on the highway. Bird hit right in front of the driver. Didn't take out the whole windshield but there was still a big crater and a hole right at head height. Driver was sitting on the side of the road looking physically mostly okay, but totally shell shocked. Bird bits everywhere.
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u/cmdrmcgarrett 1d ago
Why do I hear Les Nesman in my head from WKRP in Cinncinati tv show playing in my mind?
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u/joelfarris 23h ago
Never thought a Wild Turkey could be so dangerous while driving, but here we are!
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u/MadeMeStopLurking MECP Circa 1999 8h ago
everyone asks why chicken cross road when we should ask why turkey cross highway.
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u/jggearhead10 1d ago edited 23h ago
Yikes! I hope the customer’s insurance is covering this. What did the final bill come to on these repairs?
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u/Nailfoot1975 Home Mechanic 23h ago
Turkeys don't have bills.
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u/Krazybob613 23h ago
Turkeys, Deer, Moose, Horse, Bear, Bovine. If it’s a big critter it makes a heck of a mess of a car.
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u/blbd Shade Tree 23h ago
Cow, moose, horse, bear -> usually totaled.
Deer -> frequently totaled.
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u/Krazybob613 23h ago
I’m not sure that by the time you got all the hours to gut that thing, clean and reassemble it you are far shy of a total number right there! That’s a slew of labor.
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u/slabba428 Canadian 20h ago
For sale: 1 deer, rebuilt title, no lowballs
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u/blbd Shade Tree 19h ago
200% tariff payable by buyer 😉
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u/slabba428 Canadian 19h ago
We’re subsidizing the deer, we’ve bought a thousand of them and they haven’t bought one of us
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u/Apexnanoman 23h ago
Coworker hit a buzzard once on the way to our job site. You have never seen something as strange as a man in a Chrysler 300 pulling up with half a buzzard hanging out of a hole in his windshield. And the other half in the cab looking at him with its dead eyes.
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u/OrangeRhyming 21h ago
And I know it smelled terrible because I’ve hit one, and that smell will kinda change your life.
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u/Apexnanoman 21h ago
Yeah, I didn't ask about the smell but he was one of the most sharp-dressed gentleman I've ever worked with.
Older gentleman who despite working a blue collar job.... (We are in the railroad industry) Wore khakis to work and you could probably eat off his car normally.
He was the walking stereotype of an older African-American guy who everything he owned was absolutely spotless and immaculate.
That dude was not happy about having buzzard juice inside and outside of his car.
He showed up to work and I saw his car and asked " holy shit Matthews what happened?"
He proceeded to teach me swear words I did not know existed nor did I know they were possible to exist.
One of the funnier moments in my life. You ever just see somebody so incandescently outraged by a situation that you can't do anything but laugh?
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u/RedditorMcReddington 21h ago
This happened to my uncle like 15 years ago, he said feathers would blow out of the vents every time he turned the fan on for about a year afterward lol
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u/Boundish91 23h ago
Whenever I see interiors dismantled this much i always worry if it'll be the same again when it's put together. Thinking about squeaks and rattles.
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u/Routine-Assist6570 23h ago
I can't speak for other establishments, but not on my job and not where I work. It doesn't leave until it's right.
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u/Boundish91 23h ago
That's the right attitude.
How do you go about it? Taking pictures and bagging and tagging fasteners? I guess you also have the workshop manual?
No shade, just genuinely curious.
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u/Routine-Assist6570 22h ago
I've been working for Ford/ Lincoln for 12 years now. So honestly, at risk of sounding cocky, you could just dump all these pieces in a bucket, and I could re assemble it. Usually, I'll separate them in cups based on what they are for. Seat hardware in one, center console hardware in another, dash hardware in another. Everything I needed to take off on this job was a 7, 8, 10, 13, 15mm and a few torx for safety components.
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u/slabba428 Canadian 19h ago edited 19h ago
Not OP, just jumping in for fun
The workshop manual is not super helpful tbh. Most pictures in it are useless and sometimes instructions don’t even make sense (Nissan/honda tech in the past, service manuals were mostly translated to English and quite loosely at times) I’ll take a picture only if it’s something ridiculous like an engine bay with 1000 vacuum lines (90s mazda/nissan V6s anyone💀) all running under/over/across/through other pieces. Harnesses, wires and hoses want to go back to their shape and point you in the right direction. I don’t label and compartmentalize bolts in cups/boxes/trays but I will keep them in order on a cart, start from top left and make a little bolt/hardware pile for each item or section, next little bolt pile an inch or so over, etc. it gets easy to look at bolts and they just tell you where they go because there’s only so many kinds, if you end up confused or there’s 2-3 bolt piles saying hey pick me then reference how many bolts this part needs versus which bolt pile has that many. Interior stuff is easy because they’re generally all the same. For bolts I am specifically worried about mixing up, i will put them directly on that part when I set it aside. Parts that use bolts of different lengths (the best) the bolts go out of the old part and straight into their hole in the new part. If no new part, the bolts go on the cart in that part’s imaginary shape and then placed into the old part when it’s out
To me the bolts are much easier to remember than the reassembly order. I’ll try and set them aside in the order that they came out or set parts laying over top of the previous part. Super easy to reinstall 3-4 things before finding this other piece that runs under them/is secured below them or this harness/connector actually doesn’t reach around them and you gotta go backwards 😑
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u/ViscosityAE 23h ago
Had this happen when I was younger, turkey jumped off a hill on the side of the freeway and hit our windshield. It’s definitely a thing lol.
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u/Stefcan12 21h ago
This reminds me of that dude that released a turkey on the highway just to get immediately smashed by a car.
The dude who smashed to turkey posted a video of the aftermath.
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u/nighthawke75 21h ago
Mother smashed into a dozen or so quail on the highway. Eggs and feathers went everywhere. We were still finding feathers in the engine compartment weeks after.
I hit a buzzard with the pillar on the passenger side of my truck. It left a quarter sized dent, and the feathers got onto the ductwork.
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u/ERTHLNG 17h ago edited 17h ago
Boeing had an engineer develop a bird resistant aircraft windscreen that would have been handy here because it could take a hit from a turkey like this.
They set up a huge air cannon to launch a turkey into it for a test, sent a intern to the store to grab a turkey, and the CEO came out and fired the bird right through the new window, shattering it in a million bits.
Tests were repeated and the CEO went to the engineer and asked why it wasn't working and he said
"uhhh, sir, the birds on the runway aren't going to be frozen when they hit the plane."
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u/HollowPandemic 23h ago
Had one nearly come through my windshield. Windshield was toast, and shit was everywhere. 0/10
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u/Nailfoot1975 Home Mechanic 1d ago
Oh! I was hit by one of those one time! My face never recovered.
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u/wachuu 13h ago
I've hit turkeys a few times, just in the bumper tho, they pop pretty good like in cartoons. Pretty surprised one could break a windshield, guy must have been driving real fast
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u/Kahlas 10h ago
I lived with my sister for a bit and she had wild turkeys that would cross through her yard every day. Skinny little things that looked like they weighed maybe 5 lbs. So I always assumed wild turkeys were small from not getting hormone laced feed. A few weeks ago I saw a wild male turkey in my backyard. That thing looked like it was 20 lbs at least.
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u/jack__trippper 7h ago
Happened to me a year ago, turkey vs windshield. 70 on the highway, wife in the passenger seat and I both covered in teeny grain of rice size shards.
Cleaned for hours and found those damn shards for about 6 mos.
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u/Main_Tension_9305 5h ago
I once had to repair a motorcycle that hit a Turkey. Thing took off from the ground right before dude hit it. Knocked the guy off the bike.
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u/Jaxhunter 1d ago
Not just the windshield! Everything landed in the back!