Winshield fuel damage

[gethomas]

Accidentally spilled a few ounces of fuel (mogas). The windshield was severely damaged breaking out of frame. See pictures.

Has anyone replaced a windshield with Plexiglas acrylic? Seems like fill location with Lexan is problematic.

[WaiexN143NM]

hi guy,
sorry to see this happen to you. when i refuel i have a towel i put over the lexan to protect it. keep it in the baggage bay. a few others have spilled fuel, with the disasterous results. i think its good to keep lexan as its good for bird strikes. the bigger canopy is plexi, easy to blow and easy to polish. lexan very easy to scratch. id get a new piece from sonex. home depot carries lexan, but clear no tint.
good luck!

michael

[Matt541]

Wow! Sorry to see that, but thank you for sharing your experience. And all from a few ounces, yikes! Definitely has me rethinking my fueling method.

My understanding is that anyone who has a Todd's canopy has (the option of) a plexi windscreen as they were formed and shipped as one complete bubble. So, there is legacy Sonex products out there flying with them. Tinted plexi sheets can be found online, this was an option I considered when it was time to replace mine. (I stuck with the Lexan.)

Good luck in whichever path you take.

[bakerde36]

I had the same thing happen to me. You can find smoke Lexan online but it is the shipping that will be the cost even from Sonex.
I went to my local race car parts dealer and bought a piece of clear lexan off him for 100 bucks.

[Onex107]

My Onex windshield was damaged in the first few hours. Then I read the manual. The Onex fuel cap is through a hole in the windshield and just a drop of fuel causes a crack. When I had a leaky fuel nozzle it ran down the firewall bow and caused 50 little short cracks in the front edge. My cracks are vertical. parallel with the centerline of the windshield. One next to the fuel hole is about 4 inches long. I'm replacing the windshield, at 300 hours, as we speak with the same Sonex part and vow to be more careful fueling. I bought a fuel pump for 5 gal. cans that pumps 5 gal. in 3 minutes and I don't spill a drop anymore. Onex windshield is $150.00.
After the original crack I bought some peel and stick black vinyl and put a tapered protected area around the fuel hole that helped with the drips. I'm not sure a towel would be enough protection.

[sonex892.]

When fuel is spilt on the lexan the only way to minimise the damage is to wipe it off immediately! Before it begins to evaporate. I have used the shirt I was wearing at the time, more than once.
Steve

[gcm52]

I purchased tinted Lexan from a place that sells screens and screen doors. Was about $100 for a size big enough for a Onex windshield.

[Rofomoto]

I got 4x8 sheet of lexan (bronze tint) from Home Depot for 190.00 it’s enough for two windshields.

[WesRagle]

Hi Guys,

This thread came up just as I was playing around with some Lexan. I was thinking about forming some lexan for my Onex fuel cap cover. The cover ended up right where I want to see during takeoff and while in the landing flare.

So, I'm going to piggy back onto this thread for a post.

First, turns out you can form Lexan in the oven by heating to 310 F. My oven's "bang bang" controller over shot about 18 degrees but it didn't seem to hurt anything. The Lexan didn't form by itself but was easy to form around a can by hand at that temperature.

My fuel cutout from the scrap box:


Then this thread came up and I decided to throw the thing in some Avgas. While I was at it I cut a little square of lexan from a sheet I had. I also included a piece of stressed lexan for good measure.





I let them soak for an hour and got them out and cleaned them up with some WashWax. The stressed piece was the only piece that "appeared" to be affected. It was heavily crazed.



I went ahead and soaked the samples in Mo Gas just for good measure.



The crazing of the stressed piece continued but the other samples appeared unaffected again.



The question that popped into my mind was: Are all of the pieces damaged but the damage is only visible on the stressed piece?

The best way I could come up with to answer that question was to "pinch" the two flat pieces between my fingers and see what happened. As suspected the crazed piece snapped in two. The other piece just folded as you would expect an unexposed piece of lexan to do.



Now there's some useless information generated by someone obviously out of anything to do :-)

Wes

[WaiexN143NM]

hi all,
thanks billy for the update on tinted lexan now avbl at home depot.
and wes for your experimenting. the lower part of windscreens would get the most fuel due to gravity, and thats where the screws are and curvature starts, , so its stressed in that area.
and steve great idea to try to save the windscreen with prompt action.

best to everyone, stay safe, and hoping to see everyone at airventure 2021.

WaiexN143NM
Michael