Back a while ago there was a thread on chopping tops and cutting the corner glass on the deluxe AD. This glass is tempered and there was discussion of if it was possible to cut it.
On another site there was a post by someone in the glass business that lays it all out. Here is a portion on the post pertaining to the subject. He is a little off on the "Except for the windshield, the remainder all automotive glass is tempered" He is referring to late models, an older car/truck with flat glass was safetyplate. Only the bent glass was tempered.
"Windshields are not tempered, and they can be cut; I'm aware of that. Like you said though, it is difficult to successfully do. Except for the windshield, the remainder all automotive glass is tempered and cannot be cut. Once glass is tempered, it can no longer be cut, or drilled, without it exploding. All "cutting", grinding and drilling is done before tempering. The tempering process puts a compressive stress on the perimeter of the glass and that's what keeps it from exploding on its own. If you remove that band of compressive stresses, nothing is holding it together. If the glass is not tempered correctly, and the compressive stresses are not distributed evenly, the glass can even explode, untouched, in a brand new car for no reason. I worked for an automotive glass mfgr and we had a little problem with that once...oops. When tempered glass "explodes", the chunks even have to be under a certain size per federal safety regulations... Ok, off the topic a little... On 99.9%+ of all modern cars, all glass is tempered except the windshield. I believe some of the very, very high end Mercedes cars use (or used at one time) laminated backglass for bulletproofing"
