Tinting a car

For some reason, I've always wished I knew more about cars, especially about pulling them apart and seeing how it all works. Elton has been talking about tinting my car for a while. With the Hawaiian heat, it's quite a necessity which blocks out more than 90% of the UV rays besides keeping the car a lot cooler in the sun. The best part was it only cost us $35 rather than $200 if we had a tint shop do it. Took us 3 hours in total. Surprisingly, it also gave the car a sportier, somewhat more expensive look too. And I found great satisfaction in knowing we did it ourselves. 


Part 1: Disassemble the car door. It was a lot easier than I thought. Just unscrew a couple screws and snap the door out then unplug the two electrical cords. We used the 35% tint which is the darkest legally allowed for front windscreens.

Part 2: measure out the tinting sheet, spray water so it stays against the window, cut out the shape against the window with a blade and squeegee (bought at an auto store for $5). The tricky part is to make sure not to cut the rubber sides of the window with the blade. Peeling the tint sheet apart from the adhesive sheet proved to be a real task. Had we read the instructions, we would've discovered all we had to do was pull the pieces apart with two pieces of tape on each side.

 Part 3: spray the tint sheet as it's pulled off the adhesive sheet, place the tint up against the window (make sure window is thoroughly sprayed wet), adjust it to fit, use the squeegee and quickly scrape the sheet against the window until all air bubbles are pushed out to the corners. This part is a little tricky as we had to move fast before the water dries. Had to keep spraying the water as we adjusted the tint to fit the window but making sure not to kink the tinting sheet.

Voila! Final product looked fabulous! I wouldn't say it was terribly hard but it is doable if you like playing with cars...plus it's a whole lot cheaper!