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larry: larry here fromammonyc.com. now, we've all seenwindow tints, some good, and some bad. what are the differenttypes of tint, and how it is installed? what techniques make windowtint look good versus bad? and of course, what's legaland what's not? all those questions are goingto be answered today, coming up on this episodeof "drive clean."
this is my longtime friend robcitrone from infinite tint, who has personally installedall my tints and, more importantly, my customers'tints. he's been doing itfor 18 years. and i consider him one of thebest in the business. today, we'll go over theassessment, the preparation for the installation, andthe installation itself. but before we go over theinstall, rob, give me a quick history of window tint?
rob: well, window tintstarted in the '50s. it used to be a sprayed film. it wasn't the best. visibility wasn't really thatgreat through the window. larry: i can imagine. rob: then the '60s came, andthey came out with a film. it was a two-ply part. it was a dyed film, andthen an adhesive side. then after that, they came outwith a three-ply part, which
was a scratch resistant, a dyed,and then the adhesive. larry: and that's whatwe're using today? rob: and that's whatwe use today. larry: because i found thisrolling around your shop here. now explain, what arethe percentages? and what do they meanwhen getting a tint? rob: all right, well, differentstates have different laws. the legal limit in newyork state is 70%.
so 70% of light-- larry: so over here, likereally, really light. rob: yeah. very light. 70% of light has to be goingthrough the window. here is a 5%. that means 5% of light is goingthrough the window. that's what theycall limo tint. larry: now how do you knowwhat's legal in your state?
so in new york, apparentlyit's 70%. and connecticut, or nebraska,how do i know what my state has? rob: well, you can go to iwfa,the international window film association, and you can look upthe law chart, and you find out what is your-- larry: your state regulation. rob: different states, you know,connecticut is a 35%. you could do 35% of light goingthrough the window.
so. larry: what's the firstthing you do when a customer walks in? rob: well, the first thing ido is i go over the car and make sure there's no scratches,dings, dents, and make sure the interior is good,the windows are good, there's no scratches. and i also take a lookat the defrost lines. sometimes you'll seea little black mark
on the defrost line. if that's cut, then thewhole line won't work. larry: really. rob: you know? you go over, if there's anystickers on the car, you want to ask them if they want to savethat sticker, or if they just want to throw it out. larry: so what doyou do for that? rob: well, what i do is,i heat the sticker up.
and i peel it off very slowly. i want to try to save theadhesive on the sticker. so that's why you heat it. it gets the adhesive soft. i peel it off. and then i do a laminateon it. it's kind of likea clear film. and it sticks on the windowby static cling. larry: after we tint, wecan put it back on?
we can stick it right back on. and it's got no adhesive onit, so it won't interfere. then we ask the customer, whatare they doing a tint for. are they doing it forprivacy, looks, just protection of the interior? we prep the car. larry: now, when i first came torob, i wasn't exactly sure what tint level i wanted. we'll talk more about that.
but he sort of pushed me in theright direction, and i'm really happy withwhat we chose. so the first step he's doinghere is just quickly wiping down the window. when i say quickly, again,he's going to go crazy on cleaning it. now here, he's puttingbaby powder. and he lightly wipes it aroundthe glass, just so there's a non-stick factor to it.
and i'm not sure if it's uniqueto him, but it's pretty neat because the film that he'sabout to put on here is not going to stick. now the next technique is tomake an h. and he's doing this with a wet paper toweland some soap. so what's going to happen is, asthat plastic sheet lays on, meaning the film, lays on theglass, there's just going to be a little bit of sticky areajust so it doesn't fall all over the place, or slide offthe back of the car.
well, here's with the gopro. and when i first went up thereon the ladder to hook the gopro up, it almost felldown on the car. so i lost my mind, and i wrappedit about five times with duct tape. all right, now that he'sactually placed a large sheet of film on the back of theglass, he's going to roughly cut out around the edges. now the reason he's doing this,as i learned, is the
inside of the glass isgoing to mimic the outside of the glass. and as most of you wouldimagine, that window tint and the film, when he's all done,is not going to go on the it's actually going to go, ofcourse, on the inside to protect it from the weatherand things of that nature. but for him to physically getinside the car and cut it would just be too crazy. and it would start to comedown on him, obviously,
because it's on the inside. so what window tinters do isthey measure the outside of the glass to, again,mimic the inside. afterwards here, he veryquickly sort of lays out the film. now it's not perfect in termsof he's flattening the whole thing out, but, if you thinkabout it, what he's really doing, it's sort of likewrapping a piece of paper around a basketball.
and so the technique you seehere, when he's using the heater, and he's got a gloveon his left hand because it gets very hot, it's what theycall dry shrinking. there's a few other differentmethods, but this is very common. so he'll heat it up gently. and what's kind of crazy aboutthis is i actually took classes on window tinting. and it's really technical, thatif you burn through it,
you've got to startall over again. so at any point, youmake a mistake, you've got start over. so it is definitely an art. so what he's doing is shrinkingit so that it actually can form tothe piece of glass. now, the glass isn'texactly straight. there's a little bitof curvature in it. so any time there's a curve,like a basketball, and putting
wrapping paper on it, you knowhow difficult that is. so what he's doing now isadding a little bit more lubrication because, before,there was powder underneath there because he wanted itto slide around and move. he didn't want it to stick. so now, what he's doing isactually stretching everything out after he usedthe heat gun. so he wants to make sure thatthe sides are going to be perfect along the edges.
so he's straightening it out. and as you straighten out andflaten it out, it's actually going to lengthen a bit. so we'll have to cutthat around. now, this last little part here,in terms of measuring, if you will, is he's using hisrazor blade to cut around my break light. now when we got inside-- that'sactually me inside the car holding the light--
we tried to get insidebecause i wanted to pull the light down. and i wanted the tintto go flush. i didn't like the ideaof cutting it out. but as we tried to pull itdown, part of the light fixture around the edge there,to the right of the red actual light, was stuck to the glass. so we had to cut around it. now, going back to the lastpart, what he's doing here is
as he stretched it out, youcould imagine that the tint actually got a little bitlonger, meaning there wasn't any air pockets, andthat sort of thing. so it got closer to the edges. so he's using his razorblade right along the edge to cut around. now, the interesting part isthat if he miscuts just a little bit, light is goingto pass through. and he'd have to startall over again.
now, this board is alsovery common in-- and he has a portable one onthe left hand side there. and what he does is he kind ofpicks out anything, any little dust or lint, or what have you,puts it on this board, so he can see. and then he's going to trim theedges because when it was on the glass, you haveblack glass. you have black trim lookinginto black carpet. so it's very hard to forthe eye to catch it.
so when he puts it against thiswood board, you can see the little pieces that he'sactually shaving off to have it perfectly fitinto the glass. which is interesting because,like i said, if he just makes one little wrong cut there,light is going to pass through it, and it's going to be veryobvious that there was a mistake made. so that's why he's being verydeliberate about it. so here begins the processof cleaning.
and i mentioned before, he justcleaned a little bit of the glass-- you're going to see-- this guy would put meout of business in terms of cleaning glass. now, as a detailer, weall know, that we don't like doing glass. it's such a paint in the butt. there's plasticizers that comeout, especially on the
windshield. but nobody ever thinks aboutthe rear window. now, this window, atthis time, i had just gotten the car. so i hadn't really gonein and cleaned it in this sort of fashion. but what he's usingis very pliable-- it bends pretty easily, andthere's a scrub pad on it, but not hard enough where you'd messup those lines, or you'd
break the lines that healluded to before. so you can see, he's scrubbingpretty good. and the big difference with tintis if there's any little imperfection, the tint isgoing to emphasize it. meaning if you cut it wrong,the light's going to go through it, you're goingto see it, and think it's a bad job. with those lines, if there's anydirt that's on the north side or the south side of thatline, at the top and the
bottom, it's not goingto allow the tint to completely lay flat. likewise, right nowhe's cleaning the edges around the seals. so if the tint goes down inthere, and catches those seals, and they are dirty, lookhow much dirt is on this from the towel. i mean, it's really gross. if the tint catches that, what'sgoing to happen is it's
not going to allow it toperfectly stick to the back of the window. and you'll have a littlefiber, sort of like a clear bra. if there's junk or anything ina clear bra, and you lay the clear bra down, you're goingto see it through the clear bra against the paint. and it's not going tobe a great job. so he's militantabout cleaning.
i've never seen anybody cleanit so many times. and he continues here with different brushes and squeegees. now as he's cleaning this, ican't help myself as i walk over, and i point to the car,and tell him there's a little spot right there. my ocd kicked in. and i think he gave me such adirty look through the-- when he's in the back of the car,going like dude, i
know where it is. stop looking at it. by this time, he's sittingin the back of the car. he's pouring sweat. i'm feeling really badbecause the angle-- the back windows are alwaysnotoriously hard. but because this is an oldercar, the seals were sort of an issue because they hadn'tbeen cleaned in years. so what he had to do is actuallyuse compressed air,
which is a new trick i hadnever seen anybody do. so he'll blow from one end andput the towel on the other. and all the contaminants willget stuck in the towel as he's blowing it out. so it's 100% clean. and, normally, he'll go back andjust clean up the little lines, which he told me arekind of the real difficult part, where you just leave onelittle line where the film can't lay completely flat, andyou've basically ruined your
entire tint, and you've got tostart all over with that process, which is a nightmare. so once he finds somethingthat's a little off, he scrubs it down again and then goesthrough the whole process. so this is where it getspretty interesting. so the film is on that woodenboard back there. but there's a piece of glasson top of it, so it's nice and slick. so what he's doing, see thatfilm that he's pulled up?
that's the protective coating. so right now, what he's doneis he put lubrication, or water and soap, in betweenthose two layers. now the physical layer that'sclosest to the wood, that's the one that's going to go on--see, he's putting more lubrication, that's the partthat's going to go on the backside of the glass but thedifficult part is he's got to get it inside the car withoutgetting any residue on the sticky part.
so as you can see, he's rollingit very, very thin so that he can transport it insidethe car without, let's say, touching one of the seats,or something like that, where just the tiniest littlefiber, or the tiniest little bit of wind will get on there,and then it'll show through just like a clear bra. so he hops inside the car,rewets the window down, and then, while he's putting itin, watch, he pulls the protective coating off atthe same exact time.
so it's a little bit ofa balancing act here. and he doesn't want anything toget behind the film right before it sticks onto the window. so right now he's got to get itup there without touching the roof, or anything that'snot perfectly clean glass. otherwise, instantly, it's goingto look as if there's something caught behind it. and you've got to startall over again. that's the part that iappreciated the most about
this art, is, the tiniest littlemistake is going to be visible because you're workingwith glass, which i find pretty interesting. now he told me off camera thatit was pretty common to have the corners have some issues. so you can see, he's gentlypushing the water and the soap out. and then he'll slidethe air pocket out. but he was saying, if i push toohard right now, if i push
too hard, i could actually puta little crimp in the film here and have to startall over again. so this process, by theway, probably took two or three hours. and he wasn't doing anythingspecial because we were there. that was just the process. so now that it's sort of upthere, but not really on the glass perfectly, he goesup to another squeegee. and the squeegee waslike a medium.
so the first one waspretty soft. this one was a little bitharder, but a medium. and he's just squeezingout the water, but still being gentle. and towards the end ofthe job, he says, this is a hard card. and it's sort of like a creditcard, a little bit bigger, a little bit sturdier. and he'll actually get all theair out that way and then
cleans it up with a little bitof water that's squirts out on the side with a cleanpaper towel. now that the back windowis done, we need to do the side windows. and if you see, on the porsche,there's a back side window, there's the normalwindow, and then the little window in front. so there's really three separatewindows, which is more work for him, of course.
but he started off with theactual passenger side. now the trick to save himselfsome more time is, you notice, he's putting a secondfilm on top of it. and much like we did on theoutside of the rear glass, so that he can mimic the inside ofthe rear glass, he's going to use the passengerside main window. and he's going to cut out twopieces at once and then just reverse them forthe other side. so that saves him time.
i mean, all this work, and he'sbeen doing this so long that he can figure out a way tominimize his time so that he can do multiple cars and,of course, generate more revenue, which is justvery, very smart. so he's cutting out the sides. and he'll pull off the partthat's not necessary. i notice he keeps using lots andlots of water to make sure that he can slide itaround the glass. but if you notice, thewindow is actually
down at this point. and so that's the technique. you put the window down first. and years ago, the big kind ofannoyance, i remember, when i first got my windows tinted xamount of years ago, was you couldn't get the film allthe way to the top. you had to leave a little spacebecause when you went up into the window sill, it wouldpull the film down as you went in there.
so they actually lefta little space. so when you rolled your windowdown, there was a gap of light, which is kindof annoying. now and this particularfilm is suntech. they make this three part filmthat's much stronger. so what he's going to do is putit up to the very, very top of the glass, and he's goingto take a razor blade and razor blade that top areaso that there's no gap, no space, or no lightcoming through.
so he'll run his finger allthe way across the glass. now you have a perfect fit. the next thing you've got tothink about is, hey, how do i move that glass down withoutcausing any issues in terms of crimpling it, and sort ofruining it, if you will. so he nicely putsthe window up. i know we were talking aboutthat, like, hey, how do you do that without causingany issues? and then he'll put these tinylittle cut marks, these little
creases in, and then take itover to the big board and straight razor blade it so thathe now has two perfectly cut out windows. and he'll just reverse them foreach side, which i thought was pretty cool. before you can work on thedoors, he actually has to have a bit of a mechanic backgroundas well, where he has to take every door panel apart. and again, years ago, tintswouldn't go all
the way to the top. but it wouldn't also go allthe way down either. and it would cause issues whenyou would roll your window up and roll your window down. it would actually peel off. it just wasn't good. so what he's sort of perfected,and what he's done for me over the years when iowned my detail shop, is he'd have to take off those panelsso that the tint would go in
smoothly and not have any fibersor anything in there stuck behind it. and of course, you're going tohave to reclean the glass to the nth degree. and if you remember, right nowhe's using a razor blade. and we talked about thatin our window cleaning. so he certainly has given mesome wonderful advice over the years as to how to clean glassbecause he's the ultimate glass cleaner because hisbusiness is based on whether
the film, and the things thathe does to it, is clean. and if it's not, the first thingpeople do when they look at window tint, is they go rightup to the tint, and they look through the glass. and if there's something there,they're going to have issues, and for him to goback and do it again. so he'll gingerly take it off. and you'll see, quickly, he'llgo over to the glass to get it on there.
you don't want any wind, youdon't want anything rolling around in the shop to geton the sticky side. and he'll push it up to thevery, very top of the glass. and now, with the door exposed,he won't have to jam, or bend, the film to go intothe glass guard, which is where your glass goes down andhas that little fibers that clean the glass off asit goes up and down. so now, he doesn't have toworry about those little fibers going in becausehe took the door off.
rob here at infinite tinthas been amazing. and i'm loving the newtint on the 964. it totally completes thelook of the car. for a pdf of things you shouldknow before tinting your windows, and to check out ourgallery of window tint inspiration, visitammonyc.com. well, that's it for me guys. thanks again for watchinganother episode of "drive clean," right here onthe drive network.
after watching this videomultiple times and editing it, i realized i forgot to say whattint i put on the car. so my question to you is, whatdo you think i put on the car, based on the video, and seeinghim pick up the tint, and seeing light go throughit, what's your guess. leave a comment below. i'd be very, very grateful. and as always, thanks so muchfor watching, guys, and supporting the drive channel.
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