(upbeat 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 it 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 gonna pit me against
a professional window tinter to see if
this is one of those thing that's better left to the pros.
I'm Zach and this is Money Pit.
Let's get struggling.
(thunder rambling)
You might be thinking 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, 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
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 gonna have to stare at it forever.
So to drive that point home, we brought a pro,
and we're gonna go head to head,
he's gonna do the driver side,
I'm gonna do the passenger side of the Prius.
So depending on how much longer it takes me
and how much worse my side looks,
we'll 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 tinting,
and why it might not be a good idea
to do it yourself all the time.
You gotta have a pretty specific set of tools
that I didn't have.
So I got on Amazon and bought myself a nice little toolkit.
This is what I'm gonna be working with today.
You look pretty well prepared, tell me about what you got.
- Yeah, I think I got the same what you have in there.
- Okay, (laughing) nice, nice.
Well, I might be borrowing some tools
from you today, I don't know.
- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- All right. Well, I wanna get into this.
So I don't want you to give me too much information.
I wanna kind of struggle,
but I might ask you some questions along the way.
- Okay, sounds good.
- [Felipe] Brandon, how long do you think
this is gonna take you?
- 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 to have a car tinted
with carbon impregnated tint,
it's durable, lasts a really long time.
And it seems like the best bang for the buck option.
Now if you do wanna spend an arm and a leg
there's another option, and that's ceramic tinting.
This can cost upwards of $600-$700 to have a car done,
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 gonna 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.
(upbeat 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 gotta hurry and get your order in quick
'cause they're gonna sell out faster than
10 millimeter socket sell out on
10 millimeter socket sale day.
Is that funny? Who can tell?
So go to donutmedia.com and order yours now
before they're sold out.
(upbeat music)
Start the timer Tina.
All right, Brandon, well, the first thing I need
to ask you for is one of those spray bottles.
- Yeah. - I don't have one.
So what's in here?
- Soap and water, baby shampoo and water.
- 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, so you clean with this and apply with this?
- I do. - Nice. All right, well,
now I've got one important part of the solution,
the solution, so I'm gonna start using it,
you just stay there.
(upbeat music)
So ultimately, this is gonna 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 figured that out,
cut it out and transfer it and put it on the inside.
- So this is done when you're tinting the car mobily.
Now at my shop, I have a potter
where I can type in the year, make and model 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 size? - The exact size.
So you just clean the car, clean the windows,
and then you install the film.
- Wow, all right, that's like cheating.
- Yeah. (laughing) - That's amazing.
(upbeat music)
- We're about 15 minutes in
Brandon's, on a second window.
Jobe's still over there.
Trying on one.
- Listen, if anybody thinks I'm gonna win,
you just need to change sides right now.
This is a rookie mistake I think.
While I was trimming, it kind of shifted on me a little
which obviously you should probably try to avoid.
So I've got kind of an ugly...
It doesn't look great.
I mean, there's a lot of guess and check happening.
(upbeat music)
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 gotta put it on the inside.
Okay, this is two layers, right?
- Yeah, well,
- There's the-- - There's the 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.
(Brandon laughing)
I can install it.
That don't look very good.
Moment of truth, now or never.
I guess we're just gonna stick this thing on.
Oh my God, I hope I did this the right way.
(woman laughing)
I'll never know because I can't get the two things apart.
How do you separate them?
(Brandon laughing)
- So the easiest way put it on the window.
- Okay.
- And then you're gonna peel it from the corner,
it kind of sticks to the back glass.
- Yep, okay, so
- [Brandon] And then once you have this wet
now before you peel this though,
did you prep that glass ready?
- I razor bladed it and wiped it down.
- Perfect.
- Okay, now glue's all wet.
Our window's wet.
(Brandon laughing)
Oh, God, why is he laughing?
laughing!
I ripped a hole in it, my tool just snagged it.
Just trying to squeegee down and I got it with the edge.
I'll just Sharpie that in.
Now I've got a few like, bubbles kind of coming up
(mumbles) 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 what's 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 them
what we call fingers. - I see.
Pushed it down - Yeah, so the panel.
I don't wanna mess up your window film here.
So we'll roll down the window.
- Don't worry about that. (Brandon laughing)
- And then now you can push those fingers down
and they shouldn't come back up.
- Aha.
- Yeah, don't be afraid to push on either.
The more water you squeeze 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 applied the film was the felt on there,
the felt got underneath the film.
And so now the film has felt under it,
it's not allowing to sit to the window film.
So that's why he's pulling back away.
So you do one of two things, you can either
pull the film back and clean it.
That's what I would suggest
pulling the film back and cleaning with your fingers
and then spraying water again and in 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.
(Brandon laughing)
I can't get these bubbles to stop coming back.
- They're yours, bro.
- They're Christina's.
- That's true. That's true.
- So 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, yeah. - Torch's a little aggressive.
Need some help?
- No.
(Brandon laughing)
Yes. I can't get these bubbles to stop coming back.
What do you do?
- I would say, we definitely have to use a heat gun
and a paper towel to dry out those fingers.
What will happen is these fingers
from going straight up and down, they'll turn zigzag
and when they turn zigzag, it means it's shrunk.
If you push it down, it'll stay down.
- Okay. - So we'll start with
this one right here. - So it's pretty
dry right now.
- Yeah.
- Oh-ho, zigzag, I saw that.
- Right here, this one.
- Whoa.
Looks like this guy knows what he's doing.
Well, okay, actually, that's good. Is this done basically?
- That's basically done.
- Apart from my nice hole?
Oh, no, I can do this tiny thing.
- Now you can do the little front quarter
- Sucks.
- Cool, 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 films.
'Cause when you make your template,
make sure that you put the template on the face side,
where is the clear not the film.
- Yeah, how do you tell?
- So this is how you tell.
- So you can see--
- How do you get that apart?
How do you just do that right in front of my face?
Okay.
- The template goes on the side with the clear.
- Okay.
Yup, come on.
- I'm done, sir.
- Oh, all right.
- Thank you very much.
- Well, hey, it's been a good race.
Well, I'm still at the starting line.
Okay, that little tiny window was pretty tricky, I did.
Not the best job either.
This corner, the trimming's a little bit off,
trimming's a little whack and
it looks like I scratched it with the tool.
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 wack up here.
Did I do that?
It's just so easy to ruin it.
Okay, well, that's my best work yet.
It was also the easiest, yeah?
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. (laughing)
Okay.
So this is the other piece
so it matches up nicely like that.
So
how do you
do that?
Hey, Brandon.
(upbeat music)
Oh, that's as good as I can get her.
Let's walk around real quick and pick apart my work.
So that's less than ideal.
I don't know even how I did that, but I did it.
Mostly got the bubbles worked out.
God.
The defroster lines gave me a little bit of trouble.
Moving right along.
But not really, there's little condensation.
This window turned out okay.
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, 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.
(upbeat music)
So, you know, in my opinion,
this is clearly one of those things,
that definitely makes sense to pay the pros to do.
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,
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 are
20 bucks and 10 is not that much.
So if you're thinking about starting a little side hustle,
I can see window tinting being a pretty good avenue.
So thanks for watching.
I hope you learned something about window tinting.
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.
If I could do a super, super--
- [Woman] A super, super (laughing)