When I first bought our 1982 Porsche 911SC, the seller told me the windshield was “taken out for bodywork.” Sounds simple, right? Wrong. In reality, the glass was never properly fitted back into the frame after some questionable work was done to it. That “detail” kicked off a months-long battle with one of the most overlooked parts of a car: the windshield.
Round One: The Rubber Seal Struggle
At first, I tried to refit the glass that came with the car. Took it to a local shop… and they broke it. That’s when I learned the first painful lesson: 911s have different glass and rubber seal combinations.
So I bought another windshield with an OEM rubber seal. Tried again. This time, I realized the frame itself was wrong. The lower section of the frame had been butchered, so the glass would never sit right.
Thanks to mockup frames from Benefit Autoklassika, I tried to realign it. I cut the lower part open, rewelded it, and made it as straight as I could. Time for round two.
Round Two: Success… almost
With Triin helping me, we fitted the new windshield. It looked good — until a fine crack appeared. No sound, just a spreading line that ran across the glass. Brand-new glass ruined.
Still, it was fitted enough that I could finally drive the Porsche. That victory lasted a few days, until the windshield literally started popping out — bottom middle, top middle. The frame was still not right.
The Breaking Point: Going 993
At this point, I had enough. Our goal of starting the road trip was getting closer, and I didn’t want to risk fighting glass for another few months. The solution? 993-style glued-in windshield.
Of course, that decision came with a huge to-do list:
To glue in the windshield, I needed to change the headliner (because you can’t swap it later).
To change the headliner, I had to remove all the windows.
While at it, I bent the windshield frame edges so the new glass would sit better and have a solid surface to glue on.
For the record, yes — “glue-in” is the right term. Porsche moved to glued-in windshields with the 964/993 because they’re stronger, safer, and seal much better than the old rubber system.
A Viral Accident
Some of this story you might already know from TikTok/Instagram. We used an old cracked glass (with a nearly invisible crack) to stage a “whoops” moment where the windshield drops and breaks. It looked real enough to go viral — hundreds of thousands of views later, people still think it was our brand-new windshield 😅
To Be Continued…
Right now, the glued-in 993 windshield is finally fitted, the new headliner is in, and the Porsche feels one step closer to being road-trip ready. But like everything else on this car, the saga continues.
