My Jeep Grand Cherokee Spontaneously Exploded has this happened to anyone else? I just want to let people know to stay safe and keep the sunroof shade closed in case. If I didn’t have mine closed a lot of broken glass would have shattered all over myself and my 9 year old daughter.
If it has, suspect it is a very rare occurrence. Any vehicle is capable of exploding given the right circumstances, but more often result in an engine fire rather than an explosion.
Your Cherokee exploded OR did the glass in your sunroof explode? big difference.
I presume that it’s the sun roof glass that exploded/ shattered. I expect it was a rock thrown from another cars tire.
Yosemite
Please tell us more about the explosion. Was it the whole car like in a move explosion or was did the sunroof break as others suggested?
If it was the sunroof, maybe it had a chip on it (its winter time) or other weakness. Maybe something fell on it? Maybe it was replaced before with a cheap knockoff that was not up to OEM standard?
This can happen to any vehicle at anytime.
Tester
Thanks for the heads-up OP. The glass sun-roof design certainly looks less appealing to me now that I know that can happen. My main sunroof experience is with the kind that’s either open fully to the air or closed, no glass. My only other experience, years ago I had a co-worker w/a Toyota MR2 (itty bitty sports car) and he was too tall for that car, so he had to drive with the sunroof popped open otherwise his head wouldn’t fit. That one was transparent, but I thought at the time anyway it was probably polycarbonate (plastic), not glass. If you’d like to use the forum search feature (above right), we get posts here from time to time about glass parts exploding for no apparent reason, windows, and for some reason mirrors seem to be especially susceptible to this problem. Glass is a great material, but it just isn’t flexible at all, so any binding in its mounts at all can cause it to crack or even shatter and explode. Oh my, thinking of Star Trek 4 and the on-board whale tanks, how much longer do we need to wait before somebody invents transparent aluminum?
When tempered glass breaks there is a quick “pop” and drop of small glass fragments. For some people this is an explosion with a fire ball 100 feet in the air, just agree with them and they will go away.
No, this has never happened to me, because I would never buy, own, or accept as a gift any car with a sunroof of any kind. I just don’t see the allure of having a big hole in the roof of my car.
Thanks, for nothing. Great insight to the problem.
I once sold my '88 Accord with 217K miles to a friend.
A few months later he was driving on the highway next to a tractor-trailer and the driver’s side window shattered right next to his head.
Maybe the sound vibrations were the tipping point?
Luckily he kept his wits and there was no accident or injury; and he didn’t suspect there was something I didn’t disclose.
Just saying it’s not just sunroofs.
good point… any tempered glass can shatter…
some kind of tank seems to be the only safe choice now
A buddy of mine bought a brand new Silverado 3/4 ton, 4wd, leather, Duramax Diesel engine, crew cab. He ordered it so he could get the color he wanted. I loved that truck.
One morning, when the truck was still under warranty, we were going to drive to Nashville to look at an old Jeep he wanted to buy. It was a cold morning, so when I got there, he already had the truck idling warming up with the heat on full blast. We both got in the truck, and we managed to both close our doors at what seemed like the exact same time. The back glass immediately shattered when we closed the doors. I’m not sure if it was caused more by the simultaneous door closing, the heated cab vs the cold outside air, or a combination of both, although I imagine there was an underlying issue with the glass of some sort.
Less than a week later he had a brand new F250 instead. Diesel, leather, 4wd crew cab, similar color. Yeah…he didn’t mind spending money. The F250 turned out to be a bust, as it was the first year for the problematic 6.0 power stroke.