Twelve minutes and about three and a half miles. Pennsport cars reach us with two things above all: cracks that have travelled, because the older blocks down there still have block paving that shakes a chip along, and smashed door glass from the riverside lots. Windshields are $250 to $450 fitted, door and back glass $200 to $500, chip fills $60 to $130. We are at 2640 Snyder Avenue, 215-608-1108.
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Pennsport sits between Front Street and the river, beside and under the I-95 viaduct, on one of the oldest street patterns in the city. The blocks are short and tight, the alleys are tighter, and a good number of the side streets and crossings are still laid in block rather than asphalt. Cars park on the street and they get used constantly, because this is a neighbourhood of trades, shift work and people who drive to jobs rather than commute to an office. They take a beating from the surface underneath them before anything else touches them.
The parking mix produces the rest of the work. There are the big lots along Columbus Boulevard where a car sits for hours with nobody watching it, and there are the quiet residential blocks by Dickinson Square where it sits all night in much the same way. Broken door glass is $200 to $500 fitted and usually same day, and every piece comes out of the door, the channel and the seat rails before we hand the keys back, because tempered glass does not break into three pieces, it breaks into three thousand. Chips get filled for $60 to $130 while you wait. The price is agreed before we start and it does not move.
Front Street and Columbus Boulevard run parallel along the river with the I-95 viaduct between them and ramps dropping traffic in and out at speed. Second Street, Two Street, runs through the middle with the Mummers clubhouses along it, and it is the one road round here that stops entirely on the first of January. Dickinson Square sits in the centre with parking on all four sides. Reed, Tasker and Dickinson carry the traffic west toward Broad. The older streets and crossings near the square and down toward the river keep their block paving, and where block meets an asphalt patch there is a lip that every wheel in the neighbourhood finds sooner or later.
“They were able to install a new drivers side rear window for me the same day I called, when all the other shops were saying it could take a few days. They did a wonderful job and even cleaned up all the glass that was in my car (even folded a blanket I had in there that got glass on it) from my window being busted in.”
First, the surface. Block paving and the seams where it has been patched put a constant low knock through the car, and there is no better way to turn a stable chip into a crack that reaches the edge of the glass. Second, the viaduct and its ramps. Grit falls from the structure onto the streets underneath, and the on-ramps at Columbus Boulevard are short merges where everyone accelerates hard behind somebody else's rear tyres. Third, break-ins, split between the riverside lots and the quiet residential blocks near the square. Fourth, damp and salt off the river, which will not break a windshield but does get into an open chip, and contamination is why an old chip never fills as cleanly as a fresh one.
Take Tasker Street west to Broad, turn south and stay on Broad through Morris, Moore, Mifflin and McKean until you reach Snyder Avenue, then west past 20th and 25th; we are between 26th and 27th. Reed and Dickinson work the same way if Tasker is blocked. If you are already on Columbus Boulevard, come inland on Snyder itself and stay on it, because it runs from the river the whole way out to us. Twelve minutes normally. On Mummers weekend, or any day Two Street is closed off, start from Front Street or Fourth Street rather than trying to cross Second.
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We do, and it is the part people remember. A shattered side window puts tempered glass into the door skin, the window channel, the seat rails, the carpet and usually the heater vents. We vacuum it out properly, including the channel inside the door where the pieces sit and rattle for months if they are left. Do not try to hoover it yourself first; it pushes the fragments deeper into places we then have to work harder to reach.
Not onto a closed street, no. If Two Street or your block is shut for the parade or the practices, the choice is to wait a day or to get the car out to a street that is open and give us that address instead. Tape a sheet of plastic over the opening from the inside in the meantime, and keep anything worth taking out of the car. Call 215-608-1108 and we will find the first slot that works.
Yes. Quarter lights, vent glass, back glass and sunroof panels are all part of the same work, matched to the year, make and model before you drive over. Quarter glass on some cars is bonded in rather than sitting in a channel, which changes the method and adds cure time, so tell us on the phone which pane went and we will tell you what the job actually involves. Fitted, it falls in the $200 to $500 range.
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| Saturday | 08:30 – 16:00 |