Anyone have any advice on how to get rid of the small scratches and pits that cars seem to collect through the many years of motorway-speed sandblasting and wiper-ing?

I know there's companies that can polish windscreens, but is there any DIY solution?

Do you have a polisher? Either Dual Action or a Rotary?

If not you can still you use this to polish by hand, but if you had a polisher it would be far less effort.

This topic can also be useful.

Simple answer is you really wont make much difference to a windscreen even using cerium oxide & a electric polisher. When I worked for a window company we used this stuff to polish out the odd scratch, it took quite an effort.

Windscreens are very different, trust me I tried for ages on my diesel hack. The only thing I managed to do was make a mess all over the paint work from the splatters from the oxide.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and much more effective to pay the £50 excess and have auto glass replace the windscreen?

Well, when I want somebody to replace the windscreen it will cost me £ 500 because it's impossible to get fully comp for such an old car in Belgium (anything over 5yo) unless you want to pay £ 2000 per year at a specialised company. That's after paying say £ 250 to get an expert value the car.

Other than that it's still the Original windscreen and I know what a bad fitting can do to wind noise, a-pillars and any metal structure underneath. That is from experience with a Honda HR-V that was written off by our yearly technical inspecion after 2 years of leakage following a windscreen replacement.

In short: I don't trust a lot of people to touch my car.

I heard the finest grade of Wirewool is good for this?

Anything you do, avoid heating the glass...The small scratches could possibly be repaired with cerium oxide, but the pits are "other level". The glass repair specialist use some kind of UV-curable resin which is virtually invisible the first few months, but to make it bond in very small pit, I suppose it should be "dremelled" to make it bigger, so not much point in that, in my opinion. And yes, the factory windscreen is far better than any new aftermarket...

I have a few wiper scratches on my screen, so I've been watching this thread with interest

However, last night, my mind was made up for me whan I got hit by a stone, causing a 15mm diameter "bulls-eye" mark in the glass - too big to repair, so its having a new screen next week

Just hope its better than the replacement screen I had in the Sprinty - the glass quality was quite poor - at night, I had multiple refractions of oncoming headlamp light - presumably it was picking up on the different layers of glass in the screen

I've now found a company (Autoglass-like) that will actually scrape off a couple of microns. I'm going to dig a little bit deeper and maybe pay them a visit.

I'm keeping an eye on this thread to see if I hear of any good results. I've watched the final 2 manufacturing methods years ago and its very precise work. I'm sure some restore jobs will make a big difference but I wouldn't expect perfection. As avtokrator says avoid heat, they use it in the final grind and polish stages and if the standard of finish isn't up to scratch (pardon the pun) they will always bin it rather than retry.

IMHO it's the laminate in between the glass layers which deteriorates at this age of car. Winter sun and oncoming headlights become a nightmare. As mentioned on another thread, as an AA member I was able to get an insane discount on a new screen, no questions, house visit, total cost £180. It's been bliss since.

Having been witness to the lousy job some people do when replacing a windscreen I'd rather not go the replacement route. Also a new OEM is nowhere to be found at this time. The plastic layer is still in perfect condition on mine - kept inside for 99.9% of its life. There's just some slight wiper scratches and pitting (fraction of a mm, as you would expect from very tiny impacts and sand of the last 14 years / 110.000 miles) that I'd love to get rid of.

Cerium oxide - I'm not letting anyone near my paintwork with that.