Hello all owners of late 60's trailers with the famous curved Corning glass ...
As you know the curved Corning glass is not available as a replacement part. Prices on eBay and through other sources have been hundreds of dollars for a single piece. Lexan, Acrylite, and other plastic replacements can work but people have reported varying results.
I am working with a specialist glass firm that can source exact replacement glass for the 66-67-68 trailers. It would be manufactured specifically for us. It would be tempered like the original glass, and available in the three sizes of windows common to those trailers.
We can place a group order and probably get a price of about $200 for the 17" glass and somewhat more for the larger 29" and 39" glass. This would require a minimum of 20 orders per piece. The prices are "ballpark" and subject to change. Exact price would be determined later, and there would be a shipping charge as well.
So I'm wondering two things:
1) Are there enough people who would buy this glass to place an order? To be sure, we would need to collect cash deposits in advance, perhaps 20%.
2) Is there anyone who would volunteer a good piece of the glass to use as a template? We will need one volunteer of each size of glass (I can provide the 29"). The glass volunteer would be compensated with the gift of a free replacement piece.
I would be happy to coordinate the order-taking and shipping if there is sufficient interest. Respond to this thread or PM me with your comments. Thanks!
THIS PROBLEM IS REDICULOUS. I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THESE WINDOWS HAVE BECOME SUCH A PROBLEM. I ALSO MADE TWO OTHER POSTS TONIGHT AND I WILL MENTION THIS AGAIN. SUE AT IOWA BOYS IS GETTING READY TO PART OUT A TRAILER. SHE SAID SHE MAY HAVE AS MANY AS FIVE WINDOWS AVAILABLE. HONESTLY, I WOULD RATHER PAY 400 FOR 2 NEW ONES RATHER THAN CONTINUING TO ADD TO THE INCREASE OF THE PRICE OF THESE THINGS. SO, YES, I'LL PUT UP THE MONEY FOR 2 29".
THANKS
Forrest, thanks for posting the poll. I should have thought of that.
Just to be clear, I'm only proposing to do the curved glass. You can get flat tempered glass from a variety of sources in the U.S., whereas the curved stuff is a real specialty item available only overseas.
You don't need to go overseas for this, unless you find the price of manufacture is low enough to absorb the shipping, and an order this small shall be expensive to ship.
I've used a company here in the US called Oldcastle, based in IRL but they have offices and plants all over the US. My assist had helped me locate them, I'll try and provide a link. Cliff
Cliff, thanks for the optimism but let me give you an update and info on the windows before you jump in.
First of all, I had to drop the project. I got interested queries from about 20 people but ultimately we could not generate the volume needed to make the windows cost-effective. I notified all the people on my list, last January.
Also, the glass is extremely hard to duplicate. I could not find any vendor who could do the job -- despite many promises. The glass has the following specifications:
3 different widths: 17", 29" and 39"
an *irregular* curved radius (you will need a sample to give to the vendor)
1/8" thick
chemically tempered (laminated will not do)
The last two specs are the killer. There are many companies which can do chemical tempering and many which do curved glass. None that I was able to locate could do both on a 1/8" thick piece of glass.
I do encourage people to keep looking. I suspect the market for replacement glass could be hundreds of pieces (per size) if the price were reasonable. But potential entrepreneurs should keep in mind that the competition is a $10-60 piece of plastic.
But I'm not looking for work, just trying to help. I needed glass for my yachts windshield and used these folks. It was a custom job and they handled it quite nicely.
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