I can't find the thread I started about a year ago when I asked about removing scratches, pits, and water damage from side windows so am posting this thread to share my experience salvaging a badly damaged window.

I had a tinted side window that had scratches of various depths on both sides of the glass across the whole surface, along with pits and metal from grinding splatter, and hard water spots etched in over the surface.







The bottom line is that the method in this video works. It is extremely labor intensive but it did work. I'll describe where I deviated from this, but overall, this is the way to go.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doYlaQlCloQ


This uses GP-Pro abrasives. The vid starts with medium abrasive but I had to start with their coarse to remove the deepest scratches. I also used 5" discs instead of 3" because of the extensive resurfacing needed. I recommend buying a better foam interface pad for a drill than what I was able to source locally. GP-Pro has one that would work better.

Here's how it looked after the first grinding pass.



I did not use their polish because I had other stuff on hand. After grinding, I used Chemical Guys 32 and 34 polish on their orange hex pad on my drill. I followed that with cerium oxide paste and a 5" felt pad, and finally cerium oxide with a 2" felt pad.

For most common repairs, the 3" kit exactly as used in the video would be the easiest way to go. I improvised with larger discs and coarser abrasive because of the extensive damage I had. I also substituted polishes I had on hand already. Here's the complete kit I used:





And here is the result:





There are more details and pics on my build thread here:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...t&p=2790699

Maybe somebody will find this useful.

Thanks! I will be incorporating your techniques in my work on my 69 911 E glass. My prior techniques did not see your success.

very informative and good work! We had always used rouge to buff the various glasses, but like you say labor intensive. I think that we have well over 100 side 914 windows and all are scratched in some way except for the new old stock we have

When I restored my 59 Ghia there were scratches so deep you could hook a screwdriver full stop in them.
I set up bracing on the back side of the glass and then a water source to keep glass wet and cool. I used regular wet/dry paper down in the 100 range then worked up to 3000 grit after I obtained a flat surface. I used a 3m pad adhesive to hold the paper to the 5 inch pad. Cerium Oxide was the final polish.
Every single piece of glass was scratched so I probably have a couple hundred hours in the glass.
Labor Intensive to say the least.

thanks, Brent. Great information and images.

Great info.
I'm happy to see success with side glass.
This is good news for parts that were considered unusable.

Nice post as I have to remove some deep scratches from my convertible Ghia drivers glass. I have been looking for a replacement glass for years and giving up.