# Back window suddenly.. Exploded?



## Macgomes (Apr 16, 2019)

Hello everyone,,
thank you for reading my first posts on nissanforums.com! My name is Austin. Glad to meet y'all. Hope to stay here a while 

I'll be brief. I was driving down the road, as I normally do, but I cut on my rear-defroster this night. What people normally do when their rear widow is foggy. Except it was different this night. The lower part of my windshield wasn't defrosting? like, at all. I thought nothing of it and continued driving. but within 10 minutes of driving, my window just exploded. There was a very audible bang, followed by.. this.



What.. The crap? I haven't had any noticeable problems prior to this. I've never been in a wreck, or hit anything.. Well, in this car. Thank you guys for your input


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## smj999smj (Jan 1, 2006)

Spontaneous glass breakage in tempered glass, like that which is used in automobiles, is not unheard of and not entirely understood. It's relatively rare, but not us rare as one would think. These seems to be more common on large pieces of tempered glass, like sunroofs, rear windows or even the windshield. I once worked in a large Nissan dealer in NJ where they had a customer drive-in service area that was separated from the outside as well as the shop by garage doors. A customer had brought in their late-80's 300ZX for a fuel injector recall. It snowed the night before and the service write-up area was heated. The customer dropped off their car and it was parked inside the service write-up area waiting to be worked on, as well as warming up from the cold, outside. Thirty minutes later a loud "boom" was heard and the glass in the rear hatch had transformed into thousands of little glass bits now laying inside the trunk area! A windshield with a small crack or "star" can also do this. Consumer Reports is pushing the NHTSA to look into sunroofs after a number of sunroof glass "explosions." Thinner glass used by auto manufacturers these days is also a cause. So, while unfortunate and sometimes dangerous, it does occur. My guess in your case is that the rear defogger issue that cause some of the glass to be heated and another part to not be heated caused an uneven thermal expansion which, possibly with other factors, lead to the breakage.


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