The Glass

A Scenicruiser has 37 pieces of window glass, ignoring details like double-panes and the small sliding door for the driver. Part of restoration is to bring back the tinted glass to its original appearance. That is hard to do. The original window glass was two pieces of safety glass with variable green vinyl in-between to provide sun glare protection. You either cannabalize from another PD-4501 or you put in your own window material (glass or plexiglass) and tint it, usually with a film on the inside.

739 could be in better shape when it comes to the glass, but it could be worse. The numbers don't quite tell the story. With twenty-one good and sixteen cracked, we're doing better than 50/50, but it's the curved glass that's impossible to mimic easily. The flat glass on the sides is much easier; each sash has two panes of glass, one for each half that slides open.

We're fortunate to have both lower windshields, the driver and door glass, both 'D' windows and the upper-left opera glass, as well as the two rear side pieces. The full inventory is below.

So here are the tough pieces we're looking to replace:

• both upper windshields
• the right-side triangular opera window
• the rear center window

For the skylights, the current thinking is to remove the broken double-paned glass and replace with a single pane of tinted plexiglass which should curve to fit the seal and opening.