I challenged a Pro at Window Tinting

[Music] window tint is an age-old mod that actually serves a few purposes sure obviously it makes your car look cooler but it can also block harmful uv rays and reject some heat and they can also give you a little bit of theft protection as well but actually tinting your windows seems like a difficult job oh boy so today we're going to pit me against a professional window tinter to see if this is one of those things that's better left to the pros i'm zach and this is money pit let's get struggling you might be thinking uh that anytime you're paying to have your windows tinted you're also paying for the labor to have it done so you might be thinking maybe i could just buy some tint and save all that money on labor you know do it myself honestly i really don't think this is one of the places where that is a good idea i think this is one of those things that like really takes a skill that you have to develop and it's kind of tedious work that if you do a bad job you're going to have to stare at it forever so to drive that point home we brought a pro and we're going to go head to head we're going to do he's going to do the driver's side i'm going to do the passenger side of the prius so depending on how much longer it takes me and how much worse my side looks will determine whether or not this is a good diy project anyway let's meet our pro this is brandon from solar connections brandon thanks for coming hey thank you yeah let's get some window tinting i see you brought a big old box of tools yes sir let me show you what i'm working with see so here's the thing about window tinning and why it might not be a good idea to do it yourself all the time you got to have a pretty specific set of tools that i didn't have so i got on amazon and bought myself a nice little tool kit this is what i'm going to be working with today uh you look pretty well prepared tell me about what you got yeah i think i got the same one you have in there okay well i might be borrowing some tools from you today i don't know yeah yeah definitely all right well i want to get into this so i don't want you to give me too much information i want to kind of struggle but i might ask you some questions along the way okay sounds good brandon how long do you think this is going to take you uh probably 30 minutes all right okay so obviously window tint blocks some of the visible light from coming in your car and makes your windows darker and like i mentioned it also is capable of blocking harmful uv rays that like crack your dash and infrared rays that make your car hot when it's sitting under the sun on a hot summer day but there are different types of window tint and each of them comes with different strengths and weaknesses in those different categories so let's talk about them really briefly the first type of window tint is what's called dyed film it's basically just film that's dyed black and that's the kind of window tint that you see fading to purple it's the cheapest window tint it's the worst at blocking uv rays it's the worst at blocking infrared rays it just basically makes your windows a little bit darker then moving right along we've got carbon impregnated film which is film impregnated with little bits of carbon to make it dark carbon impregnated film is really good at blocking visible light and uv light but not super good at blocking infrared rays which is heat it is relatively cost effective about 150 to 250 dollars to have a car tinted with a carbon impregnated tint uh it's durable lasts a really long time and it seems like the best bang for the buck option now if you do want to spend an arm and a leg there's another option and that's ceramic tinting this can cost upwards of six seven hundred dollars to have a car done uh you get obviously visible light blocking you get uv blocking and it blocks an incredible amount of infrared rays to keep your car nice and cool no matter how hot it is outside it's super durable it'll always look great but it is kind of expensive so for that reason we're going to be going with carbon impregnated film for christina's car and i think it'll do everything we need special announcement so many of you guys have been following along with this show and it's honestly been so great this little miata has been growing up right before our very eyes [Music] dang all this oil this is not necessarily good this is how the miata should have felt so we're partnering again with lean customs the same folks who made the high and low car pins but this time we're making an enamel pin specifically for the money pit miata just look at this thing it's so crazy to think that this little clunker turned into the car that it is today and it really did that because of you guys now we're only making 1500 of these things so you got to hurry and get your order in quick because they're going to sell out faster than 10 millimeter sockets sell out on 10 millimeter socket sail day is that funny who can tell so go to donutmedia.com and order yours now before they're sold out [Music] start the timer tina all right brandon well the first thing i need to ask you for is uh one of those spray bottles yeah i don't i don't have one so what's in here soap and water baby shampoo and water so okay so you use this to oh nice little baby shampoo why baby shampoo there's no additives in there it gives us enough room to slide the film where we need it and then we can lock it in place and it's done nice uh so you clean with this and apply with this idea nice all right well now i've got one important part of the solution the solution uh so i'm gonna start using it okay you just stay there [Music] so ultimately this is going to go on the inside of the window so i think i need to lay it out right then figure out how to cut it to the right size and then once i figure that out cut it out and transfer it and put it on the inside [Music] so this is done when you're pinning the car mobily now at my shop i have a plotter where i can type in the year make and mod of the car select the windows that i want to tint and it will actually cut it out no way yeah to like the exact same the exact size so you just clean the car clean the windows and then you install the film well all right that's like cheating that's amazing [Music] we're about 15 minutes in uh brandon's on a second window job's still over there trying on one listen if anybody thinks i'm going to win you just need to change sides right now this is a rookie mistake i think while i was trimming they kind of shifted on me a little which obviously you should probably try to avoid so i've got kind of an ugly uh it doesn't look great i mean there's a lot of guess and check happening ah that's not the straightest cut i ever cut if we're being honest right so now that i got the template cut out well looks like i just got to put it on the inside okay so there's a this is two layers right yeah well there's a clear piece yeah so when you release the clear pieces where the glue is at okay and so that's when it's time to yeah and then you can install it okay i can install it that doesn't look very good moment of truth now or never i guess we're just gonna stick this thing on [Applause] oh my god i hope i did this the right way i'll never know because i can't get the two things apart how do you separate them so the easiest way put it on the window okay and then you're gonna peel it from the corner so it kind of sticks to the back glass yep okay so and then once you have this wet now before you peel this though did you prep that glass already i razor bladed it and wiped it down perfect okay now our glue is all wet our window's wet [Music] oh god why is he laughing oh i ripped a hole in it my tool just snagged it it's trying to squeegee down and i got it with the edge i'll just sharpie that in now i've got a few like uh bubbles kind of coming up does it help with that too let's go check it out what do you got a couple creeping up from the bottom of the side okay all right so the issue was going on with this is you never pulled back the door panel so the seal is catching all the water and it's catching the film and it's pulling the what we call fingers push it down so the panel i don't want to mess up your window film here so i don't roll down the window don't worry about that and then now you can push those fingers down and they shouldn't come back up yeah don't be afraid to push on it either it'll the more water that you squeeze you out the better it is so what it looks like that you have going on here is why they're not sitting down is when you apply the film with the felt on there the felt got underneath the film and so now the film has felt under it and it's not allowing it to sit to the window film so that's why it keeps pulling back away so you do one of two things you can either pull the film back and clean it um that's what i would suggest pulling the film back and then cleaning with your fingers and then spraying water again and then laying it back down and see where you're at at that point cool we'll give that a shot so right now i finished up my side and now i'm on the back window all right i can't get these bubbles to stop coming back [Laughter] they're yours bro they're cristinos that's true that's true or should i get some heat on the scene or yeah try some heat i would suggest the heat gun i wouldn't do the torch yeah before it's a little aggressive need some help no yes i can't get these bubbles to stop coming back what do you do i would say we'll definitely have to use a heat gun and uh a paper towel to dry up those fingers what will happen is these fingers from going straight up and down they'll turn zigzagged and when they transit that means it's shrunk okay you can push it down and it'll stay down okay so we'll start with this one right here so it's pretty dry right now yeah oh a little zigzag i saw it yeah right here this one whoa it's like this guy knows what he's doing well okay actually that's good is this done basically then that's that's basically done apart from my nice hole oh now i can do this tiny thing now you gotta do the little front quarter sucks so what i would do is i would grab this clear piece right here make a template out of that it's a lot easier than working with the film when you make your template make sure that you put the template on the face side where it's the clear knot yeah how do you tell so this is this is how you tell so you can see how do you get that apart how did you just do that right in front of my face okay the template goes on the side with a clear okay all right come on i'm done sir oh all right thank you very much well hey it's been a great race uh well i'm still the starting line okay that little tiny window was uh pretty tricky i did not the best job either this corner the trimming's a little off trimming's a little whack and uh it looks like i scratched it with a tool ah it's tinted i don't think i like this now i gotta go do the rear window oh boy well this already looks kind of whack up here did i do that it's just so easy to ruin it [Music] okay well uh that's my best work yet it was also the easiest yet but hey i'm getting better at it so that's good news with that let's go to the back window he literally did half of it okay so this is the other piece so it matches up nicely like that uh so uh how do you uh do that hey brandon [Music] oh that's about as good as i can get her let's uh walk around real quick and pick apart my work so uh that's less than ideal i don't know even how i did that but i did it uh mostly got the bubbles worked out god the defroster lines are giving me a little bit of trouble moving right along uh i'm not really that's a little condensation this window turned out okay uh this one oh well you can see you see way too much through there well i did put a hole in this one and this trimming is way off so there's a handful of blemishes uh which is to be expected but overall the windows that i did are tinted so i guess that's kind of a success but when you go look at brandon's work you realize how bad i did so uh you know in my opinion this is clearly one of those things that definitely makes sense to pay the pros to do uh it's tedious work it's it's pretty difficult and it does require a skill set that you have to develop that said if this kind of work is your type of work and something you think you might enjoy this is something that i think anybody could learn to do you know after five or six cars i'd probably be decent at it and the fact is it doesn't cost that much to get into it the tools that i got on amazon were 20 bucks and tint is you know not that much so if you're thinking about starting a little side hustle i could see window tinning being a pretty good avenue so thanks for watching i hope you learned something about window tinning i had a nice fun struggle all day so i'm gonna go take a nice long bath and i'll see you guys next wednesday goodbye

Channel: Donut Media

Views: 725,991

Rating: 4.9721627 out of 5

Keywords: Noob vs pro, noob v pro, window tinting, car window, toyota, toyota prius, prius c, mazda, mazda miata, Donut Media, Cars, Automotive, Money Pit, automotive history, Donut, Donut Miata, car build, car mods, Zach Jobe

Id: 6VLzKuk9TAE

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021