didnt notice a rock hitting it but im riding along and wam this long crack line occurs...the car barely has 3000 miles im curious if anyone else had any random cracksor if its possible to be a defect windshield..ill be calling my insurance tmrw.

 

I think others have had this issue before

 

Yep. At least a dozen since the 7th gen was released. In most cases, there was no obvious sign of a rock impacting the windshield. Most happen the first year of ownership. There are several threads here for those with time to search.

Most times, the owner is told (by Nissan service rep) a rock did it, and insurance will cover all but the deductible. I personally wonder if there was a slipup in design that puts undue pressure on this 7th gen windshield. In all but one case that I am aware of, replacement windshields seem to hold up much better than the original.

 

Its a rock/pebble just cause it did not leave a chip does not matter, your traveling at 30mph, a rock gets picked up by a tire, gets tossed through the air at 30mph and comes to a dead stop at a perfect angle on your windshield, leaves a micro crack not really visible, then soon as the heat expands the glass you get the crack, it simple, not a design flaw, but an interesting theory

**** happens, same thing happened to my buddies Camry, cracked windsheild

 

Just had a rock chip on my 2011 w/only 5K miles...luckily I saw it happen & took it into Safelight to get fixed ASAP. Hardly noticeable now---insurance even picks up the tab.

Anyone know how much our windshield costs? I've had to replace the one on my wife's 4Runner about 5 times now. Hoping the same won't be true for the Max!

 

I replaced one in my '09 before, but I went through Safelite and just paid the deductible. Another time I just paid the $50 to get a chip fixed. With my '11 now I have Traveler's insurance and signed up for their glass program.

 

Having mine changed tomorrow. Installer said it would be a $700 repair if not covered by insurance. Cause, a large rock thrown by a dump truck.

 

Mine was $550, of which $200 was out-of-pocket deductible, while $350 was paid by State Farm under comprehensive (not counted as 'at fault' claim against my policy). The installer came to my home and did the job in less than an hour.

 

Cost depends on several factors including choice of OEM windshield or aftermarket and where you live

I used a company similar to Safelite and full cost was $300 using aftermarket windshield

 

Mine cracked at about 34000 miles (only a week after I got it). I had no idea anything had hit it. It was fine when I drove it to work. When I went out for lunch, I had a huge crack half-way across it. My insurance did not cover it. Apparently glass coverage is an extra add-on that isn't included in comprehensive and I didn't have it. I do now. Anyway, it cost me about $300 to get fixed at a local shop. They said they use the same replacement that a dealer would use. It looks identical to the stock windshield. I'm really happy with it.

 

Edit... The cost was $550 also, just was quoted too high of a price.

 

I just had a crack show up in a brand new 2012. The dealer is going to have to replace it under warrenty... it's horizontal and UNDER the hood line cowl and the driver wiper. Must have been a "magic" rock that made a 90 degree turn at 50 mph once it cleared my hood. I was driving on the interstate with a car in front of me but way off to my left and 75 feet away. I'm taking an exit ramp that's a bit curvy at the middle and POP! I hear this sound like I was hit with a BB but I don't see anything. Just about home and I see this shiny thin line in the windshield at the bottom, right above that halftone black paint they put around the windshield. It's such a clean fracture, you can't see it from every angle, just dead on and inside from the driver seat. Strange. Cheap @$$ Nissan windshields. I won't be doing the Safelite route either, it's going through the dealer body shop with OEM glass. I'm not buying that a $200 Safelite windshield is as good as the OEM... Cheap or not, they can keep replacing the windshield on their dime until they figure out how to make a decent one. As a family we've bought 8 Nissans there the past 12 years, hopefully they know not to mess with me.

 

Got a nickel sized "star" chip on my windshield and made and appt to get it fixed the next day. But later that night a 6" crack formed and then traveled about half way across the windshield in 4 days. Just got it replaced at a local glass shop using a non-Nissan windshield and the total with labor was $275. I have the full glass roof and wondered if that may have contributed to the crack traveling so fast. I kind of doubt it but it makes you think...... It's also a 2009 SV with 55,000 miles on it.

 

What I can't figure out is why everyone is so hellbent on having the OEM Carlex windshield put back in... isn't that what broke so easily in the first place? There's also confusion about Carlex/Carlite. Carlite and Carlex are now (they weren't always) the same company. Carlite makes the aftermarket replacement windshields. The same windshield that costs a few hundred at a glass shop is the one Nissan gets $512 for, the name is the only diff. I'd really like to see if anyone had better luck with another brand rather than throw an OEM into mine and face the same fate 3 months from now. The '12 Max windshield is just such a massive greenhouse worth of glass, too easy of a target.

If the OEM is so great, why do they break so easily? The windshield in my old 03 Max SE would stop a bullet, never had a chip in 120K....nothing worth replacing the shield for anyway. The paint chips on the edge of the hoodline, thats a different story.

 

The guy that tinted my windows made a comment that he hated Nissan's glass. He said it was thin and hard to work with. I dunno, that stuff is outta my lane, just what he said.

 

Makes me worry about longevity on those ~$7K glass roofs

 

Very true.

I found this out three years ago when my '09 windshield cracked like a rifle shot while we were crossing the top of Humpback Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was no other car within view, so we assumed we had been shot at from a nearby hill, so we raced almost a mile at breakneck speed before my wife noticed a crack was running up the windshield.

Yes, Nissan OEM Carlex glass is the same as aftermarket Carlite glass. In fact, the shop that replaced my windshield said some of their 7th gen Maxima replacement windshields actually had the word 'Carlex' etched out and the word 'Carlite' etched onto the glass just above where 'Carlex' had been.

There was no other vehicle or 'flying rock' anywhere within a half-mile of us while we were crossing Humpback Mountain, and we were easing along at 35 MPH on a smooth roadway with nothing but grass alongside the pavement. I knew at the time that the break was related to stress caused either by an imperfect fit of glass to body, or by the twisting of the car body that cannot be totally rigid with nothing but a floating double-panel roof overhead. But there is no way to prove it.

 

My windshield damage is a crack caused by stress/flex. The crack is inside the glass, you can't feel the crack on the outside of the sheet and BARELY on the inside. Goes all the way under the cowl (that plastic monstrosity at the bottom of the glass) and is damn little bigger than a spider's thread. I have a brand new Carlex window (since Nissan was paying for it) and it was installed at a glass shop by two guys with about 24 years between them doing replacements. The car sat an entire day after and I can't tell the windshield was ever changed out. The only difference is the crack is gone. Well, there is ONE small thing... my ORIGINAL window only said CARLEX and the new windows says NISSAN above CARLEX, but same model & mfg numbers. The guys said this isn't the first new Nissan they've done, they've had many with the same issue. One guy said the clips at the factory are WAY TOO TIGHT or something and can't take any stress or flexing. Doesn't make sense to me since I've never replaced one. He also said I shouldn't be back again, at least with the same issue, they'd don't "gorilla" install them like the factory does. The installer had 2 hours to work, the factory probably does it in 2 minutes. I asked why Nissan gets over $500 for that window and they get $200 for it and he said "Nissan doesn't want to be in the window replacement business".

 

Yes, Nissan simply sends cars needing glass to companies that replace glass. Also, Nissan dealers have a large overhead, and they are not adverse to letting new cars go at very small profit margins in order to get those all-important sales numbers, then make their profit in the service department.

 

Why Nissan gets 500 and the glass place gets 200, cause your going through a dealer who is calling in a guy, instead of just going to the glass place, dealership overhead is anywhere from 40k to 100k a day depending on size and staff of employees, its crazy but most people would never realize the amont of money that needs to be made to stay afloat as a dealer