Car WIndow Tinting Tips For Beginners

Car Window Tinting For Beginners

Car Window Tinting is one of the most frustrating skills to learn, it can take years and years of practice and patience and perseverance to even get to the point where you can produce good quality work that customer would be happy to pay for. So what things can you do to improve on the look and finish of your car window tinting projects.

Cleaning is a vital part of any successful car window tinting installation, I really do suggest you invest in some foaming glass cleaner, in the USA a good branded Product is from Sprayway , in the UK you can source the Wurth  brand of foaming active glass cleaner, it can be expensive to buy single cans if you are not doing much car window tinting but  I like to buy in batches of 24, I know this is quite an outlay but if you are serious about making a career out of car window tinting then you need the right products to work with.

Also needed is some good quality masking tape, again the more prominent brand names do seem to have better adhesion, personally I use 3M masking tape and I get this from a local body shop supply company,

If the vehicle in question has felt seals which surround the window make sure before you even start anything else that you tape of these felt seals with your masking tape, this. Any felt or contamination can be forced out into your installation if you dont tape of those felt seals!

car window tinting 3 m masking tape
I'm not a big fan of using razorblades on the glass directly when tinting windows, I know some guys are happy to blade the glass but I'm sure you can get scratches and when you're dealing with very expensive cars I prefer to minimise my risk and just use a scrub pad similar to the ones you used cleaning the dishes at home, again brand names here -  I use the Scotch pads, these available from Costco and come in a pack of about 12 on them it will say "non-scratch" so it's safe your glass.



Preparing the windows for car window tinting.


Apply liberal amounts of this glass cleaner sprayed directly onto the glass and leave it to set in about 1 min, in that time you will notice a slight fizzing sound, this is the active foam having an effect on the dirty glass surface. Scrub with your scrub pad until you get a nice foam all over the glass.  I tend to start with a window in the closed position and clean the visible area and then carry out the second part of the cleaning process.

First this  example we will use a roll window so that would be a door window in the vehicle, take a conqueror tool which is a thin squeegee and slide down the edge of the glass close to the door seal, then using your squeegee  go from left-to-right  bringing that foamy solution to the long edge of the door then using your squeegee bring that solution down to the bottom of the door, using this process you should have collected all foaming glass cleaner.

Spray the window with a light mist of foaming glass cleaner and using soft microfibre cloth to buff the glass clean, I use Costco for my microfibre cloths and use the Yellow ones coming in a pack of maybe 25 , they are very cheap and they are really really good, I heavily recommend these if you are getting started with car window tinting..

Now lower the window down and clean the top edge, a touch of glass cleaner sprayed onto your school pad  - now scrub the top edge of the glass squeaky across and then collect any loose water runs down with your microfibre cloth, paying particular attention to this upper part of the glass if you don't get this right you'll get dirt coming down from the top edge into installation and your car window tinting efforts will have been in vain.

So now what I will do with the window is with my heat gun , I heat just on the inside slightly  - be very careful and don't burn any interior trim  - it needs just a just a gentle warmth, this will help to improve the ahhesion of the film when you come to install it plus if there's any little loose bits of dust on the glass, the heat gun should blow them away, now take a tack rag, this is a rag that is used when painting cars,  rub this on the glass, this will pick up any of the last small specs of dust and then should give you a perfect base or as very close to perfect -   as long as you do the next part of the procedure correctly



This is the first step in your quest to become proficient at car window tinting - its not as easy as it looks on YouTube, you may well be pulling your hair out, but stick with and car window tinting can be a very rewarding trade.

Next Time - Reverse Rolling Window Film For Back Windows

2 comments:

  1. Found your site a great help.....apart from this page ;-) On my tablet trying to read black writing on a very dark grey background is very hard work!Keep up the good work though,will be a regular visitor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thx. I have edited the mobile theme so it should be more readable now. Glad you like the Blog.

    ReplyDelete