+1

 

Man up and buy the non-airbag 87 replacement glass with or without antenna. The early 944 glass is narrower requiring a metal trim set and the sealant surface area barely covers the new gap if you use an early windshield on a late car. It can be done but for $50 buy the correct fit in the first place IMO. The early windshield had a ribbon gasket style seal and the later ones used a gun sealant and pressure fit. I've had both early and late models and they just aren't compatible unless you want to jump through flaming hoops.

 

I'm going to chime in on the used glass. I bought a used windshield for my 928 on eBay for about $35, still on the donor car. I lined up a mobile windshield install service to meet me at the seller's house and they did the swap in about 45 minutes. I think my total expense was under $200.

Check Craig's List for 944s being parted and make some phone calls.

 

Lexan is very unsafe in a street car. Sunlight breaks it down, making it VERY brittle. It breaks into big shards. You see it on track cars because the spend relatively little time in the sun.

 

I just had a Sekurit, top tint, antenna, airbag ( which is all I could find ) windshield installed in our 85.5 non-airbag cruiser. They could have gotten Pilkington a little cheaper and Chinese glass cheaper still, but I didn't ask the figures ( probably not much dif).

$550 installed. The windshield was listed for the later cars, like 87 or 88 or so, with airbag.

The glass shop needed to shave-off the rubber piece that makes it an "airbag" windshield so it would fit flush. We did the research here on rennlist about that topic, then shared it with the glass shop.

Perfect installation. And the young guy that did it had never dealt w/ 944 before. But he was careful. I took it to their shop so they could work on it at their convenience, indoors.


The conditions in ND are so freaking extreme that you better not try any fancy solutions. (we have a house, well, whats left of a house, in Minot and know this well).

Follow Kuhl's advice for sure on getting the right sized windshield.


Regarding Lexan, we just installed a set of Lexan windows in a 90 4s 911 for track use. Major PITA. You will not be able to form the complex corners on Lexan, it needs to be formed for the car professionally and purchased for that car. Our neighbor/car owner was smart. He refused to operate the car unless we also installed layers of tear-away film on top of windshield. And that was a double-major PITA due to it not wanting to shrink at the proportions x-y needed to fit the 911 contour.

 

Thank you all for your input. I think its been made pretty clear, I'm just going to have to cough up the dough to put a glass windshield in.