How To Tint Car Windows

Your First Steps – Cleaning The Glass

In our previous post on car window tinting we discussed the earlier techniques from back in the day such as splicing rear windows , now we will come more up to date and talk about how to tint car windows from a beginners perspective in 2011+ and try and equip you with a few tips and tricks that will help in your quest to learn how to tint car windows.

No Place For Dirt?
Cleaning is the first thing you must master as you start your journey into the car window tinting business, you must develop an effective and efficient cleaning method and once you realise how key this method is in relation to how to get the job done you will be on your way. Most  installers will use either their regular slip solution sprayed onto a non-scratch scrub pad, similar to the one used to clean your dishes at home, and clean the glass vigorously with this, if the vehicle in question you are learning on, is a dirty old thing, then make sure before you attempt to clean the window that you use a micro fibre cloth to clean all around the window channel area, this is the area which the glass slides into at either end of the window, this can be a rubber coated with felt or just a rubber.If the vehicle has felt coated rubbers, i prefer to mask these off with a good quality masking tape such as 3M or Tessa. If you buy cheap low-tack masking tape it doesn’t stick well to this felt area and will probably fall off once you start your cleaning process. How to tint car windows is all about repetition,get it right from the start and things will work out in the end, many people think they know how to do the job and is super simple, well, you’ve seen these jobs around town, lots of dirt and creases and the job just looks a mess!
Once you have scrubbed the window, we now come to the real juice , as their are a milion ways to skin a rabbit, the same can be said for cleaining a car window , ok, not quite a million I know, but one mans way is abhorent to the next, so, this is the basic approach I recommend for how to prep windows, hang on…have we talked about razor blading the glass?, we did in our previous post on [intlink id="234" type="page"]on this page[/intlink] but I will say this, Razor blazing has it’s place when tinting windows, but in the wrong hands it can cause damage, so I would say try and get somebody who has experience to show you this technique.

Let’s Scrub Up
My preference is for an active foam glass cleaner for cleaning windows prior to installation, most guys use their regular slip solution as the cleaning solution or others use the Dirt-Off solution made by Llumar. The beauty of the foaming active glass gleaner is that on cars that have some serious electronics in the doors, I am always careful at all times to minimise the amount of slip solution i will use, this is a good point to note as you embark into the how to tint car windows business.

So, make your choice and get started. I am a fan of the foam as well because it shows you where you have squegeed the glass and if you have missed any places, so, whatever method you choose , start with the window in the fully closed position and get a nice foam on the glass, I will then typically wipe down one edge close to the window seal with a micro fibre cloth, then i will squegee from left to right, stopping to wipe the squegee after each pass, use overlapping strokes, finish just short of the seal area on the opposite side of the glass, so once you have finished the window, you will have an are of the glass that is not yet squegeed , use the concuerer tool to run down the side of the glass and force the solution to the bottom corner of the glass.
Now you can either mist the glass with your slip solution and carry out the same procedure or use your foaming glass cleaner and micro fibre cloth and buff the window.

Top Edge Cleaning

Some people who are just starting out learning how to tint car windows seem to struggle with a lot of contamintion in this part of the window , the trick here is to keep the top part of the window a little drier when cleaning the window, apply the foam cleaner or slip solution to the scrub pad rather than spraying the window, i prefer to then buff the top part of the glass with a micro fibre cloth and then carrying out the “magic steps” which we reveal in our paid course, you will get super clean installations and jetpack your way into this lucrative industry.
In our next blog post we will go a little deeper into car window tinting and prepare you to become an auto window tinting ninja installer!!

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