Well, the customer is me. I’ll try to keep this short. About 8 years ago, I had to replace said windshield. I had the “$0 deductible” windshield coverage with State Farm and I had to use “their guy”. I was at work when they replaced it so didn’t realize just how much the installer butchered my car. Fast forward to now and it cracks again. I have the state farm people go to replace it and when they removed the cowl (same company that did this hack originally) they refused the job. I was shocked at the condition of the entire lower flange. You can guess who the installers were, it was a state farm forced contractor. I have since learned insurance companies in my state were legally forced to stop that practice. But here I am. The car is an extremely well maintained Honda Accord, J30. Any body shop that looks at this would just laugh at me. The car is totaled. $8k to do it right, and the part isn’t even made anymore. So, off I go on my own. I found a salvage yard in my area who had a donor piece ready within days (same color too). I took the entire cowl section but only needed the flange. I will post that in comments.
[UPDATE] someone had a great question below so I wanted to post part of the story here. The question was about any water penetration into the interior or other damage. The answer is no to both, only the lower flange was rusted out.
“This is a great question and surprisingly no water pen into the car. The lower flange hangs over the cowl gutter. This was all hidden because there is a cowl cover that snaps over the area (that plastic piece under the windheild wipers). The windshield is designed to drain into that and into the cowl gutter and that drains into the fenders. You can see in the pic I posted on imgur how the cowl gutter looks perfect, and the firewall portion is perfect. When I removed the old one I had to mill out 34 spot welds. The really crazy thing about the repair is that the donor part’s (spot) welds were almost in identical spots. When I test fit it, my car grabbed it like a glove. I had to wiggle it back out of the car to prep welds. It was the easiest test fit I have ever done. I looked up the VIN from the donor, and it was made in the same factory, in Ohio. The paint matches perfect. This was a complete fluke (my pop watching out for me?) From there I used plug welds. I used MIG with heavy gas shield set to 22 GA. Some of the plugs (in the middle) were three layers of mild steel pinch. This all went really well with my Miller MIG.”
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