Anatomy of a Open Series Windshield

[carbon20]

Greetings,

I'm entertaining the idea of repainting the windshield on my 1994 Tiara 4300 Open. This past weekend I spot checked a few screws and they all turned relatively easily. What would happen if I removed all the screws on the outside of the windshield prior to painting?My boat spent a few years in salt when it was new, freshwater since early 2000's. I wasn't sure if I removed all the screws, components would become misaligned and I'd never get it back together again. Everyone I've bounced the idea off of says "leave the screws alone and paint over them". This is the course of action I'll likely take, however my curiosity of how the whole windshield goes together is getting the better of me!

[Sans Peur]

I would not pull all the screws at once. Sometimes in our quest for perfection we really screw ourselves.

[RCKLAW]

Tiara sent me schematics of the windshield on my boat and you may wish to give them a try.

[jclark003]

The outside screws hold on what is known as the caps. These can be removed and repainted. They basically overlay and seal the glass which is laid into a channel within the frames. The underlying frames should never be removed as the deck could spring and you would probably never get it to align. There is a Tiara service built in for this procedure and they quite clearly instruct you to never remove the frames. I would strongly advise you read this before starting project.

I did this project on my 43 Open and it was a very time consuming job. The most difficult part was removing all the old sealants and bedding compounds. While I had the caps off I ended up pulling and resealing all the glass and lexan corner pieces. Being so far into it it just made sense to me to do it all he way.

Extreme care needs to be taken when pulling off the caps. They are custom made and no longer available from Tiara so if you kink one you will be talking to a fabricator. On the plus side I was able to remove all of my caps easily with a putty knife. Screws are installed with insulators and a coating called Lanocote and for me came right out. I had 2 that were tight so I applied some heat to coax them along.

Tiara can provide you all the replacement screws, insulators, seals and gaskets. If I were to do it again I would definitely consider painting the caps while installed on the boat. Getting all the old butyl tape and bedding out took forever and was a tremendous mess. If your windshield is leaking that would be a different story.

Good luck.

[carbon20]

Thank you all for your input. Confirmed for me that I'm going to paint them in place!