Three or four minutes — Olde Richmond is the neighborhood next door to the shop, and most people drop the car and walk back. Chips are $60–$130 and about thirty minutes. Windshields are $250–$450 fitted, an hour of bay time plus the safe drive-away wait. Door, quarter and back glass is $200–$500. We are at 1028 E Columbia Avenue, open 8 to 5 Monday through Friday and closed at weekends. Call 215-608-1108.
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Olde Richmond sits in the pocket between Aramingo Avenue and I-95, on streets like Belgrade, Almond, Thompson and Tulip, and it has been rebuilt house by house for fifteen years. Empty lots became townhouses with roof decks. The people who moved into them park on the street, because almost none of those houses came with a garage and the blocks were already full. The result is rows of cars nose to tail with a dumpster or a contractor's pickup holding down two of the spaces, and everything else squeezing past both.
Glass takes it from two directions here. There is nearly always a site within a block or two, which means sand, grit and cut-off dust settling on parked cars, and the first pass of the wipers grinds it into the screen. And there is the highway along the eastern edge: I-95 and its ramps hand out stone chips to anybody whose commute touches them, which is most people. Add a break-in rate that climbs whenever a block goes quiet late and you have the three jobs that come out of Olde Richmond most weeks. The bay being four minutes away is the one thing in your favor — close enough that leaving the car and walking home is the normal way to do it rather than a favor to ask for.
Aramingo Avenue runs along one side of the neighborhood and Richmond Street and the I-95 embankment along the other, with a tight one-way grid in between: Belgrade, Almond, Thompson, Memphis, Cedar and Tulip running one way, with York, Cumberland and Susquehanna crossing them. Much of that grid is Belgian block under a thin skin of asphalt, and where utility work has been done the patch never sits flush with what is around it. Girard Avenue closes the bottom end with trolley rail in it. Parking is on both sides of streets barely wide enough for a car to pass a parked one, which is why so many mirrors are scuffed and why a mobile job on these particular blocks is usually a no.
“My car was broken into and one window was completely shattered. Rich gave me a quote right away and was able to replace it the next morning at a very reasonable price. He also cleaned up all the glass that I didn’t get a chance to clean up before dropping off my car. I had a great experience and I would definitely recommend using his business for window replacements”
Construction comes first here, and it is a genuinely local answer rather than a general one — this neighborhood has been a rolling building site for years, and the grit that comes off a site is exactly the size that scores glass when a wiper drags it. Second is I-95 and its ramps on the eastern edge, which put loose stone and truck spray into every commute that touches them. Third is the paving: block under asphalt, uneven trench patches and the Girard rail all flex a car enough to make a stable chip run, usually on an ordinary trip rather than a dramatic one. Fourth is break-ins, concentrated on the quieter blocks and on the stretch of new houses where cars are newer than the neighbors are used to.
It is three or four minutes. Come southwest on Belgrade or Thompson to Girard Avenue, then up Frankford Avenue to Columbia; or take Aramingo down to Frankford and turn there. From the York Street end, Frankford Avenue is the whole trip. If you are leaving the car, walking home from the shop is realistic from most of Olde Richmond, and plenty of people do exactly that rather than sit anywhere. Ring 215-608-1108 with the year, make and model first so the glass is confirmed before you move a car with a hole in it.
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Ask, but expect the bay to be the better answer on most of these blocks. Between skips, contractors' trucks and cars parked nose to tail, there is often nowhere to stand beside the vehicle, and a windshield cannot be walked onto a car from the middle of a one-way street with a box truck waiting. Dust is the second problem, because a bond line needs to be clean. Four minutes to the shop with a firm price at the other end usually beats sending a van to fail.
Yes — that is exactly what a chip fill is for. Half an hour, $60–$130, and you drive it away straight afterwards because nothing has been unbonded. The window for it is narrower than people think: roughly, while the break is smaller than a quarter, is not directly in your line of sight, and has not started to run. On Olde Richmond streets that window closes faster than it would somewhere with smooth asphalt, so it is worth doing the week you notice it rather than the month.
Yes. Back glass is tempered like door glass, so when it goes it goes completely, and it takes the defroster grid and often the aerial print with it. The replacement pane comes with those elements and the connections get remade rather than left dangling. It sits in the $200–$500 band with door and quarter glass. The clean-up matters more on a back window than anywhere else, because the fragments go straight into the parcel shelf, the trunk seals and the rear seat backs.
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