Fifteen minutes and four miles, over the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge and down. University City cars sit still for weeks at a time, which is why so many of them arrive here with a crack rather than a chip. A repairable chip is $60 to $130 and half an hour; a replacement windshield is $250 to $450 fitted, an hour of work plus safe drive-away time. Call 215-608-1108.
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The car population in University City is unusual. A large share belongs to students who drive home twice a semester, to hospital staff working rotating shifts who park in a structure, and to households on the permit blocks west of 40th who use the car at weekends. What almost nobody does is drive it every day. A windshield chip collected on the interstate in September will sit through October, November and December untouched, and the first hard freeze turns it into a repair we can no longer do.
That is the single most useful thing we can tell anyone here: deal with the chip while it is still a chip. Half an hour and $60 to $130, frequently covered outright by comprehensive insurance, against $250 to $450 for glass once it has run. The drive down is four miles and takes about fifteen minutes. If the car is on a residential block west of 40th, the van is straightforward; in a hospital or campus parking structure it usually is not, because of clearance and because adhesive work needs somewhere the vehicle will not be moved while it cures.
Market, Chestnut, Walnut and South Street all cross the Schuylkill within a few blocks of each other, and every one of those bridges has a joint at each end. The subway-surface trolleys come out of the tunnel at the 40th Street portal and run in the street from there, so Baltimore, Chester and Woodland Avenues all carry rail set into the roadway with the usual sunken strip beside it. Thirty-fourth Street runs south past the hospitals toward the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge. Around Drexel and the medical campuses there is permanent construction, hoardings, plate steel over trenches and dust. West of 40th the blocks turn residential and permit-parked, with street trees and driveways in places.
“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, stored damage. A car parked for six weeks between uses does not get its chip noticed, and the freeze-thaw cycle works on it whether anyone is looking or not. Second, the trolley rail west of the 40th Street portal, where crossing at an angle, which the street layout usually forces on you, puts a sharp diagonal load through the glass. Third, the bridge decks: four crossings of the Schuylkill inside a mile is a lot of expansion joints for a car that only leaves the neighbourhood occasionally. Fourth, construction dust from the campus and hospital sites, which settles on the glass and gets dragged across it by dry wipers until the screen hazes against oncoming headlights.
Thirty-fourth Street south past the hospitals, then across the Schuylkill on the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge. On the far side follow Grays Ferry Avenue and cut east on Wharton or Reed to 26th Street, then south to Snyder Avenue; we are between 26th and 27th. The alternative is the South Street bridge to Washington Avenue, east to 25th and then south, which takes about the same time and is better if the Grays Ferry approach is backed up. Fifteen minutes either way. The same route in reverse gets you home without touching Broad Street.
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If a leg has reached the edge of the glass or it crosses your line of sight, resin will not do it and you are looking at a replacement, $250 to $450 fitted for most cars. If it has spread but stayed short and central, it is worth us looking before you spend anything. Either way, do not run the defroster on full at a frozen screen in the meantime; that is what turns a marginal case into a certain one.
We are open 8:30 to 5:30 Monday to Friday and 8:30 to 4:00 on Saturday, closed Sunday, so the answer for most shift workers is either a drop-off before a late shift and collection the next day, or the van coming to the car while it sits on a residential block. A parking structure is usually the one place we cannot help, so if that is where the car lives, plan on driving it down.
Not to the work, and usually not to the claim either. Comprehensive glass cover follows the vehicle and the policy, not the state you are standing in, and we bill insurers directly. What matters more is your deductible: chip repairs are often paid in full, while a $250 to $450 windshield against a $500 deductible means you are paying anyway. Call 215-608-1108 with the details and we will do the sums with you.
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| Monday – Friday | 08:30 – 17:30 |
| Saturday | 08:30 – 16:00 |