Rear Windsreen

[Richard Pittack]

Just hope that you never have your rear windscreen broken. Autoglass came and failed in being able to refit it, my local Ford dealership have been unable to help and later this week, I have to take the car to a Ford dealership that specialises in bodywork repairs. The problem seems to be that when they designed the car, some bright spark decided to bond the rear spoiler to the bodywork. Why have bolts if they cannot be removed. If the spoiler cannot be removed they have already said that it could cost me £6000 to order a new one so that the rear windscreen can be replaced. I feel like another complaint to Ford is on the cards. Has anyone else had a problem with this and what happened.

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[RickMachE]

You are not the first to note that removing the spoiler is in fact a challenge, yes.

 

[Richard Pittack]

Just to update you, I have now been to two Ford Dealerships, neither has been able to remove the spoiler as the screws just spin and don't undo, and they are now talking about forcing it, which might break the spoiler. Ford have yet to accept that this is a manufacturing fault and are talking about charging me £6000 to replace it. Has anyone else had this problem resolved by Ford.

 

[HuntingPudel]

A number of people have reported the same regarding the sun shade’s threaded fasteners spinning so that the bolts cannot be removed. I don’t know of a way to remove the sun shade when this has happened unless either the sun shade is destroyed or the bolt heads are cut/ground off. Once the fasteners are spinning, the sun shade is pretty much not repairable since you’re not going to be able to bolt it back on anyhow.

The person who designed the fastening system probably know anything about fastener yield and chose too large a fastener. In testing they probably found that the bolts were working loose so instead of going to a larger number of smaller fasteners in order to achieve the correct stretch they chose to use a mechanical fixing agent (Locktite or something similar), which has resulted in the threaded female fasteners that are cast into the plastic to break loose from their bosses because the Locktite is stronger than the plastic. Ugh.

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