spandy

iTrader: (1)

After seeing this question pop up failry often, and the terrible suggestions I found through searching and that many of you have probably ruined the glass and/or defroster lines in your cars trying to remove the tint, I thought I could contribute on removing window tint and save you guys 100+ bucks on paying someone else to do something that really is easy, or $500+ for all new glass if you scratch them all up.

Pretty simple, I'll start with the rollup windows. This is best done out of the sun on cool glass so your spray doesn't dry out too quickly. You will need:

-Single edge razor blades w/ scraper
-Spray bottle filled with water and a couple drops of dish soap (roughly '1' table spoon per 20oz of water)
-Towels

Pretty simply, roll down the window 1/4 of the way and start at the top edge with the razor. If you are lucky, you can use the razor to get a corner peeling, and then just pull the film all the way off in one sheet down. Pull it down as far as you can, rollup the window and peel off the remaining tint. LEAVE THE WINDOW ROLLED UP at this point as you will mostlikely have a TON of glue left on the glass and you don't want to mess your seals up by rolling the window down. If you can't get the tint to peel off in a reasonable fashion, skip this step and rollup the window and move on to the next step (below) and remove the film and glue at the same time.

Now that the film is off, you want to take the spray bottle with soap and mist the glue, spray into the edges,etc, just get it wet so it can soak for 30 seconds. Now, starting at the very bottom edge (this can be done with the door panel on or off, your choice) carefully, at a 45degree angle, start blading the glue off. If your blade is sharp, it should take only one pass and it should take all the glue off. If you are leaving track marks, either your window is too dry and needs more spray, or your blades edges are rolling over and you need to replace the blade before you scratch the glass.

Work up to the top of the window frame, and once you are certain you have all the glue off, roll the window down a bit and finish the top edge. Wipe off glass and door panels, and you are done. Most rollups take me about 5 minutes to strip, but i do this for a living, but even still a first timer going slow should be able to strip tint off both their rollups in 20-30 minutes. Pretty easy. KEEP THE WINDOW WET. If it dries, your blade will dull faster and all the glue will stick to the blade and not scrape properly.




OKAY, now for the rear hatch. Notice the defroster lines? Yeah, that means put the razor blades away unless you want to destroy the coating on the grid and make your defrosters useless. For this window you will need:

1 black garbage bag
409 (original formula, purple and white bottle)
stainless steel hobby knife (other options tool to this stated below)
White OR Blue scrubbie pad (green, red, etc, will scratch the glass!!!)
Same water and soap solution as mentioned in the rollup removal
Towels


I put some pics at the bottom showing the steps so you could referrence and see what it looks like during each step.


(1) Okay, take the garbage bag, while it is still folded up (easiest way) and cut the bottom off, then open it and cut one of the sides. This will leave you with a sheet of plastic instead of a bag. Lay it over the back window on the outside, and take your stainless steel blade and cut the bag out in the shape of the visiable glass area around the black border. if you don't have a stainless steel blade, don't cut on the glass as you can scratch it with carbon steel. This is where you could use a grease pencil to mark where the cut needs to be, and then use scissors to cut the bag. A shop light on the inside of the window while you cut on the outside helps to see through the black garbage bag to make your cut easier.

(2) Now that you have your bag cut out, open the hatch and lay the cutout on the trunk area. Take the 409 and spray the window and the bag, and spray it well as you don't want any dry spots.

(3) Place bag in postion, covering the edges the best you can (defroster tabs can get in the way, cutting around them is a good idea) and then carefully use your hand and press out all the big air bubbles the best you can. the less air you have under the bag, the better, but don't push all the 409 out trying to get the air. you can see in pic 3 that most of those bubbles are from the solution as I had already pressed the larger ari bubles out good enough, not to mention that the bag on a curved window isn't going to lay completely flat anyway, just do the best you can.

now park the car, with the rear window facing the sun for an hour to start (70+ degree weather is ideal, the hotter the better). After the hour has passed, go out and just pull back a corner of the bag and see if you can peel the tint off AND have most to all of the glue coming off with the it. If its leaving all the glue on the glass, then respray the entire area with the 409, reapply the garbage bag and let it sit for another 30 mins and repeat the process, maybe in a different area each time for up to 3 hours, any longer and it really isn't going to do much more at that point. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to get the glue to come off with the tint, but atleast in this sweating process you have weakened the films adhesive and the scrubbing will be pretty easy. If you do need to scrub the glass, immediately after removing the garbage bag and tint, spray the entire window with the water and soap and keep it wet. If the adhesive has a chance to dry, it will be alot harder to get it off, but if you keep it wet, it will be pretty easier to scrub it all off with the scrubbie pads.

(4) Towel up the remainding solution, and you are done

(5) Take to tint shop, have retinted


Oh, and I know some guys like using glass cleaner/orange cleaner/etc to clean the glue off when scraping/scrubbing...... well, it works but it turns the adhesive into a snot and makes cleanup kinda messy. With the mild soap and water, your blade/scrubbie will still be able to cut through the glue properly, but the glue will hold together better and be alot easier to pick up/wipe away.


BEFORE I FORGET....the bottom removal was only partially tinted. My customer tried to remove it themselves, and could only get about 80% of the tint off(rear deck had to come out to get it all, not to mention all the little pieces that where still on the glass) and virtually none of the glue, so what I did was alot harder as it was mostly just a glue removal. So after who ever it was picked with their finger nail for what looks like hours, they brought it to me. I had to scrub more glue than normal on this job because I didnt' have much film left behind to pull the glue off after sweating it, but that's okay because I charged them a lot more, too bad for them all their effort just ended up costing them more money. But I still went through the same process so I could weaken all the left over glue and what little bit of tint that was left as well.

I retinted the backglass with a 25% tint, but the angle makes it look like it was blacked out. Total time that I physically spend working on the car was less than 20 minutes, the other 2 hours it was parked in the sun. New tint took about 20 minutes to install as well. So less than 45 actual working minutes went into r&ring this backglass.

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clokker

iTrader: (2)

Very interesting, thanks.

Obviously, after removing the tint and before reapplying the new stuff, you have to thoroughly clean the glass...how do you do this?
If find the large hatch and steep windshield on the second gen almost impossible to keep clean/smear-free.

cesarx7

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the great writeup. Just in time too, I need to remove the crappy tint off my DD.
Now if you could only hook us up with some 3M Crystalline,...