Windscreen "sparkles"

[developer]

An odd one this.

I wear glasses when driving.

At night I get small orb type reflections (like you see on Most Haunted) from the various light sources.

For example, if there are orange street lights I get orange spots in front of my eyes.

I've had my glasses checked and the optician says they are perfect, other than they don't have an anti reflective coating on them.

Additionally, if I drive into bright sunlight, my screen appears to be very finely scratched.

So, if the glasses are perfect, then it would point towards the windscreen.

Is there a process for treating the windscreen to a thorough clean/polish.

Will a clay bar help if it's just ingrained muck?

Do reflective coatings on glasses work?

Any sensible ideas gratefully received, thanks.

 

[Philbask]

New windscreen ?!? After time the screen gets (effectively) sand blasted !! covered in minute chips / scratches and the light gets refracted all over the place, strong light causes a kind of white out!!!

 

[developer]

New windscreen ?!? After time the screen gets (effectively) sand blasted !! covered in minute chips / scratches and the light gets refracted all over the place, strong light causes a kind of white out!!!

Thanks - it's a strong possibility I think.

Do you want another Alfa 156 2.0 JTS?

52 plate, one owner (my brother, who's had 4), 70K.

 

[Philbask]

70K for an Alfa? bit too much ! haha.... No thanks buddy got enough car stuff going on atm....

 

[PXW]

Personally, I always get the anti reflective coating on my glasses. Not sure anything short of polarizing lenses would help your problem though - sounds like your screen is so bad it's acting like a prism!

 

[Dryce]

What about your eyes - if the orbs are next to the light sources this can be caused by uncorrected aberrations in your eye - and small cataracts can also cause odd night vision problems. If it's just one eye then that can make it a bit less obvious that something is up.

 

[st13phil]

OK, a few things...

Do you suffer from astigmatism? If so then it's far from unusual to get odd vision artefacts when driving, such as a halo effect or slight doubling of point light sources. Even the best corrective lenses won't completely eliminate this, but some lens types are worse than others.

In my experience, AR coating on glasses makes a huge difference to night driving as it eliminates all sorts of distracting reflections.

Have you tried sitting in the car at night and looking through an open side window? Do you get the same effects? If so, it's your eyes / lenses. If not, then it's more likely the screen at least adding to your difficulties, but a windscreen has to be pretty badly scratched to cause noticeable refraction effects. If it is that bad, then replacement is the only realistic solution.

I do suffer from astigmatism in one eye, but wear AR coated lenses. I've found by experience that to minimise odd vision artefacts at night I need to keep both my glasses and the windscreen scrupulously clean. Even the slightest greasiness on my lenses exacerbates the slight doubling of point light sources I experience by adding a sort of starburst effect.

Hope that helps?

 

[WDB124066]

I don't know if this is going to help much but I can see the sparkles like tiny stars in the windscreen, no glasses, bright sunlight conditions only. The sparkles are distributed evenly and it would appear to be something on, or even in the screen itself. It is not an MB genuine screen - Pilkington with no Star, 60 000 kms on it.

 

[Palfrem]

Quite possibly it's light constantly refracting through the glass layers and illuminating the tiny bits of dust in the PVB layer of the windscreen.

The key to success is to look through the screen not at it, if you know what I mean.

A good clean never hurts though.

 

[A210AMG]

Does it happen when you drive another car?

 

[developer]

Does it happen when you drive another car?

A good point - though before I nabbed the wife's car I took mine out tonight to have a proper "investigate".

I have driving sunglasses as well, so I drove for a while with those on and surprise surprise, no reflections, (though I did crash into a few things ).

Then, in a flash of genius , I stood on pavement looking along the street at the orange lights.

Clear glasses, same reflections as in the car.
Sunglasses, no reflections.

From this I've determined that the glasses are at fault, and will be getting them sent away tomorrow for an MAR? coating to be applied.

I'm hoping that will fix it.

I'll report back and thanks for your help/advice.

 

[A210AMG]

I've driven some cars with the heated front screens,


Drive me mad once I start seeing the lines I cannot / not see them if that makes sense....

Luckily at least as far as I know heated screens not available on a merc


Glad you got it sorted.

 

[developer]

For thread completeness, MAR coating applied to glasses, problem solved.

 

[Stratman]

I foolishly opted not to pay the extra for AR coatings on a previous pair of glasses.
I won't be making that mistake again.
As I'm an all-weather golfer I stumped up for a 'water repellent' coating on my current pair. What a waste of money. I won't be making that mistake again.

 

[developer]

My problem is that I'm recent to glasses (the last couple of years) and then only for driving. I'd no idea about MAR coatings, though the last pair were fine so must have had them.

I'm surprised the optician didn't specify the coating, as he knew they were for driving .

Anyway, all good now.

 

[evdok]

Give it a clay followed by a quality windscreen cleaner, don't forget to do inside as well, if that fails be careful you don't hit inside the screen to hard or else it will crack, then you'll need a new screen