A rock just hit your windshield. What to do in the first 24 hours

You heard the crack on I-635, and there is now a small star in the glass. What you do in the next day decides whether this is an inexpensive repair or a windshield replacement.

Do this first

Put clear tape over it. Ordinary clear packing tape, over the chip, on the outside of the glass.

That is the whole trick, and it is genuinely the highest-value thing you can do. A chip is an open void in the outer layer. From the moment it forms it starts filling with road dirt, wax, water and air — and a contaminated void does not take resin properly. The repair comes out cloudy instead of clear, or it stops being a repair at all.

Tape keeps the void clean. It costs nothing and it preserves your cheapest option.

Two caveats: use clear tape so a technician can still see the break, and do not press it hard into the damage.

Then assess it

You are answering one question: is this still likely repairable?

Repairable, generally:

• smaller than about a quarter
• more than two inches from the edge of the glass
• not directly in your line of sight
• only the outer layer broken — you cannot feel it from inside

Probably not repairable:

• reaches the edge of the glass
• longer than about six inches
• sitting directly in front of the driver
• several separate breaks
• you can feel it from inside the cabin

The full walkthrough is in repair or replace.

The four mistakes

1. Waiting. The single most expensive thing you can do. Every day the break collects more contamination, and every temperature cycle stresses it further. "I'll deal with it next month" is how a repair becomes a replacement.

2. Blasting the air conditioning at it. You get in, the car is hot, you point the vents at the glass. Cold air on the inner face of hot glass with a stress concentrator already in it is exactly the wrong move. Ease the temperature down instead — see why cracks spread in Texas heat.

3. Washing the car. Water and detergent flood the void, and a high-pressure jet drives them in. If you must, keep the spray off that area.

4. Using a windshield repair kit from the parts store. These sometimes work on the simplest bullseye break. What they cannot do is pull the air and moisture out of the void under vacuum before injecting, which is the step that determines clarity. The real problem is that a poorly executed DIY attempt fills the break with cured resin — and a professional repair afterwards is then impossible, because there is nowhere for good resin to go. You have converted a repairable chip into a replacement.

Where the rock came from, and how to get fewer of them

Not fatalism — the pattern is consistent enough to act on.

Following distance is the whole thing. A stone flicked up by a tyre ahead follows a ballistic arc. Given distance, it falls before it reaches you. Given two car lengths at 70 mph, it does not. Dropping back is the single most effective change available.

Trucks and trailers are the main source. Not because drivers are careless, but because more tyres over more loose aggregate throws more of it, and trailers carry grit in the bed and on the frame that shakes loose. Give them more room than you would a car.

Construction zones deserve real caution. Fresh chip seal, exposed aggregate and temporary surfaces put loose stone directly under traffic. DFW has sustained construction somewhere on the loop essentially permanently.

Lane position matters. The outer lanes accumulate more debris — it migrates there and stays. The middle lane on a three-lane freeway is measurably cleaner than the shoulder lane.

The first rain after a dry spell lifts accumulated grit off the surface before washing it away.

Where we see the highest chip volume across the metroplex is unsurprising: US-80 through Mesquite, the freight corridors on I-20 and I-30, I-35E through the Stemmons corridor, and I-35E around Lewisville where lake trailer traffic is heavy at weekends.

Why "I'll get it next month" costs so much

The gap between acting and waiting is larger than people assume, so here it is plainly.

Day one. Clean fracture, no contamination. Resin fills it almost completely. A skilled repair on a fresh bullseye is close to invisible.

Week one. Some dust and moisture. Still a good repair, slightly more visible.

Month one. Road film, wax from a car wash, water that has been through several heat cycles. The repair holds structurally but comes out visibly cloudy, because resin cannot displace what is already bonded to the fracture faces.

Month three, through a Texas summer. Two possible outcomes. Either the chip is still there and repairs poorly, or a temperature swing has run it into a crack and you are looking at a replacement.

The cost curve is not linear. It is roughly flat for a fortnight and then steps. Everything about this argues for the same behaviour: tape it today, book it this week.

Should you claim it?

Frequently worth a phone call, because many insurers waive the deductible on a chip repair. Funding a small repair is far cheaper for a carrier than the replacement it prevents.

If your policy does that, the repair may cost you nothing — and waiting until it becomes a replacement puts you against a deductible commonly in the $250–$500 range. Details in windshield insurance in Texas.

What the repair appointment is actually like

Worth knowing, because people put it off imagining something more disruptive than it is.

It happens where your car is. Chip repairs are the most mobile-friendly work we do. Office car park, driveway, apartment lot — anywhere with a reasonably level space and, ideally, shade.

It takes under an hour, often well under for a single chip. Most of that is setup and the cure cycles, not labour on your part.

You do not have to be there for all of it, though you will need to hand over access to the vehicle.

There is no adhesive and no cure. This is the part people conflate with a replacement. Nothing is bonded, so there is no waiting period. You drive away immediately.

The glass wants to be cool and dry. A shaded spot beats full afternoon sun, and rain will postpone it. If your only option is an exposed lot in August, morning is better than mid-afternoon.

What it looks like afterwards

Setting expectations honestly, because this is where disappointment comes from.

A faint mark remains. Always. Resin restores structural continuity and most of the optical clarity, but it does not make the damage disappear. Anyone promising invisibility is overselling.

How visible depends on three things: the type of break, how contaminated it was, and how well the vacuum stage was done. A fresh bullseye repaired within days can be genuinely hard to spot. A three-month-old star break full of road film will stay visibly cloudy.

The surface should be flush. The pit gets filled, levelled and polished so a wiper blade passes cleanly over it. If you can catch a fingernail on it afterwards, the finishing was rushed.

It stops that break spreading. It does not armour the rest of the glass against the next stone.

When we will tell you not to bother

Three cases where a repair is available but we would advise against it.

Directly in your line of sight. Even an excellent repair leaves slight optical distortion. In your primary field of view you will notice it at night, in rain and against oncoming headlights — and you cannot un-notice it. Replacement is usually the better call there.

Over the ADAS camera zone. The camera looks through that area. Distortion there is not just cosmetic.

Alongside significant pitting. If the windshield is already scattering light across the whole pane, repairing one chip fixes the wrong problem. See DFW hail season.

Does the camera change anything?

If your vehicle has a forward camera behind the rear-view mirror, a chip in the area it looks through is more serious than the same chip elsewhere, and that zone usually means replacement rather than repair.

It also means that if this does become a replacement, the camera will need recalibrating afterwards. See ADAS calibration explained.

In short

Tape it today. Get it assessed this week. That is the whole strategy, and it is worth several hundred dollars.

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Send us a close photo with a coin next to it for scale, plus one from a step back. We will tell you whether you still have a repair — and if you do not, here is what replacement involves.