While driving home from a friends house I hear a very loud pop. Immediately check gauges to make sure my motor didn't somehow decide to grenade itself or whatever. I then look in the rear view mirror to see my rear glass is completely spider-webbed. I immediately pull over and look at the damage. It doesn't seem to have an origin anywhere so I can't tell where the crack(s) started from. Here's some pics:





I'm looking for opinions as to what has caused this. Here's what I have narrowed down so far:

Option 1: It's rather cool tonight and when I got in the car the rear glass was foggy so I turned on the rear defroster to clear it up. The defroster was on for a good 15-20 minutes before the incident and had been turned off before it happened. Possibly a wiring issue has caused the rear defroster to malfunction causing the cracked glass?

Option 2: When it happened I was driving under an overpass and possibly something fell off or was thrown from the overpass and I don't see any signs of a rock or any kind of impact. Perhaps I have just overlooked the entire area? I have visually and physically inspected every inch both inside and out. The cracks are on the outside glass not on the inside.

Option 3: I just have **** poor luck and karma is getting me back for something that happened like 10 years ago.

Just curious as to what you guys think. I will inspect further tomorrow and give follow up details as to what I discover.

 

Bet it was the cold weather and hitting a bump or something in the road.

 

The temp shows 45* outside right now. It's really nothing that this car or any other haven't experienced. I was on the interstate and with fresh asphalt. No bumps.

 

This happened to my brothers mustang a few years ago, also it was cold outside and he turned the heater and defroster and the rear glass just cracked like that.

 

Meteor, my guess.

It would be unlikely but perhaps a large truck kicked up a rock and it drop down as you past through. Crazier things have happened.

*Actually now rereading your post, it would be temp related. My bad

 

What about the removal of the wiper assembly? I see that it was removed but the hole was capped nicely. Could it be that since you removed the wiper assembly you weakened the rigidity of the glass?

 

Yea the rear wiper has been gone for the better part of 6 months now. I'm not sure if that would be a culprit though. Countless other evo's have removed their rear wiper and I haven't seen or heard of it causing this.

@ adriano - I'm kinda leaning towards that too. Tomorrow I'm going to take a look at the wiring for it and see what I can come up with.

 

Daamn. I've seen this happen when when my buddy was at a cabin in the mountains and there was snow on his windshield. Smart guy poorest hot water on it to get the ice off...

 

same thing happened to me in front of my house at night time the other day, never found out why it broke?????

 

How much was the replacement? I'm sure it's cheaper than my $500 deductible + increased insurance rates.

 

Same thing happened to me. It was a cool night, car was parked at a typical ricer meet, and heard a loud pop and my rear window was shattered. Couldn't find anything around the car that hit it or what not. Looking at the center of the spider web in the glass, mine seemed to have started on the drivers side edge of the glass, under the actual edge trim about 2-3" up from the exact center edge of the glass. Never found out why, but I do remember it was a cool night out that night.

 

it happen to my brother before on his civic and was told by a mechanic that the glass got weak over time due to having it on and off on cool weather. its also command for this to happen to every type of cars

 

damn thats scary when that happens while driving, happened to me in my work truck once however it turned out my back rack was trying to get inside the truck so we know the cause of that one. all it takes is for one little corner of the glass to be affected by something, the rack only touched less than a quarter inch at the bottom corner and the whole window exploded like yours. I would be surprised if 45 deg temps would cause that but i dont know really.

 

My money is on sonic waves from outer space... most certain.

 

it was from changes from cold to warm...