What Causes the Roof to Craze?

This "engineer" is a liar. The new roof on the car in the showroom has the SAME Webasto label and the SAME part number as the first one in my 2008. There is no difference between the last of the 2 replacements put on my car and the brand new 2012 sold yesterday to some unsuspecting klutz. Webasto made them all out of cheap Makrolon, the material used to make a 10c CD-R. This material, Bayer Chemical who manufacturers it and Webasto who turns the crap plastic into Smart sunroof panels is NOT listed in ANY way on the USA approved list of plastics and manufacturers of auto glazing (windows). It should never have been allowed past the port of entry docks.
§571.205Standard No. 205, Glazing materials. :: PART 571--FEDERAL MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY STANDARDS :: CHAPTER V--NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION :: Title 49 - Transportation :: Code of Federal Regulatio

Plastic glazing finally looks promising
We're the guinea pigs....from this webpage:

"Bayer MaterialScience's plastic glazing material (Makrolon) is currently being applied to various Smart and DaimlerChrysler models. The rear triangular windows of the Smart ForTwo, Smart Roadster and Smart ForFour, for example, are made of Makrolon AG 2677. The transparent roof module of the Smart ForFour is another of the current applications for Makrolon. DaimlerChrysler uses Makrolon for the louver roofs of its A and B class models."

"Battenfeld has partnered with the mould maker Summerer and Exatec (as developers of an external plasma coating) to make plastic glazing. Battenfeld's so-called IMPmore (In-Mould Pressing) process works by injection-compression because plastic car windows must be virtually free of stress to ensure the necessary weathering resistance and to allow effective anti-scratch coating. An executive of Battenfeld told us: "The main advantage of this process -- especially for very large mouldings is that the mould pressure remains very low. So we can achieve mold pressures of about 180 bar whereas for conventional injection compression the mold pressure would be about 210 - 230 bar. The main advantage of the IMPmore process is for making mouldings in excess of 0.7-square metres. For Summerer and Exatec, the mouldings will be 1.4-square metres for a roof module. This is the largest mold for a mass produced car."


Meanwhile, Krauss-Maffei has sold a 3,200 ton Revolution two-platen press to Freeglass to mould glazing for the Smart car. The unit is located at Freeglass' site in Schwaikheim, Germany."

They've poured a lot of money into making this failing sunroof disaster. It was a failure that needs to be RECALLED and REPLACED with a completely different panel that is made of a US-approved material that doesn't craze in 12 months (they even craze on the showroom floor under the UV of the flourescent lights!)

Lots more information from Google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=pla...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a