Tinting is a very popular way of adding privacy and UV protection to your car. What is recommended here is that you don't try to tint the car yourself unless you are very serious about learning this extremely precise art through much trial and error. Getting professionals to perform tinting is normally by far and away the best practice. Obtaining all the correct tools can both be timely and expensive, learning how to use them effectively tends to come with lots of past experience.
What follows are simply the absolute basics concerning window tinting. Many other ways exist with which to tint cars, such information is beyond the scope of this brief article. For more help look to the various online tint-dedicated websites and their chatrooms.
1. Collect together all your materials and tools needed to do the tint job. These are:
X-Acto knife
razors
small sponges
4 inch squeegees
Bondo card or 4 inch hard card
spray bottle containing water with dishwashing soap (15 drops of soap per pint of water)
blow-dryer or heat gun
tinting film
bone tool
2. Place cutouts of the windows that are to be tinted on a surface devoted to cutting film, e.g. a glass board. Cut the film to the exact shape of the windows.
3. Use the spray bottle to cover the side window in soapy water.
4. With the careful use of a razor remove any residue from the side window.
5. With the use of the 4 inch squeegee remove stubborn residue from the top or bottom of the window.
6. It is now time to apply the tint. Remember to leave 0.25 to 0.0625 inches from the top edge of the window tint free, as this is the area of the windows that will be covered when the door and window are shut.
7. Using the bone tool the tint layer should be moved below the window's inner rubber seals.
8. With the hard card, ensure that the tint stretches to all corners of the window pane.
9. Now you should try to remove as much remaining moisture from between the pane and the tint layer. This is best done with the use of the blow-dryer or heat gun in one hand, and a squeegee in the other. The squeegee should be moved in a horizontal fashion.
10. The exact same methodology up to this point should be adopted to apply a tint layer to the front window screen.
11. Steps 3 and 5 should be followed to place the tint film to the back window. Importantly, never use razor blades to clean the window since the defrosting filaments could be damaged.
12. Count the quantity of defrosting filament lines on the rear window.
13. Tint should then be cut into the required number of panels to fit around these defroster lines.
14. Place the first tint panel on the bottom location, the second panel overlapping the first panel, the third panel overlapping the second etc. Locate where pairs of panels overlap.
15. Cut away the tint film from over the defroster filaments.
What is left should be a great looking set of tinted windows, well that's the theory anyway!
