My current tint is 35% on all sides and back windshield. I had always liked the darkness of it until recently... I think I want them darker (although they are illegal in CA but what the hell, I see cars hell lot darker all the time anyways). The thing is, I know its a pain in the ass to take the old tint off and it looks crappy coz they have to scratch it off at times. You guys think I should retint or live with it?

 

how about tinting 10% over the 35 to give you 25% It could work have them try one window then make you decition

 

what im tring to say is tint light over what you have to make it darker

 

I don't think you can put tint on top of tint, can you? Thought you had to remove it and then put new tint on. If you got the money and don't mind the extra risk of getting tickets go for it.

I was actually going to get 20% but he didnt have any in stock that day so I got 35% instead. I don't want to pay double to get them to 20% now.

 

I think you can in the old days their was no 20% you had to tint it twice

 

you can tint over tint. thing is. if you put 10% over 35% its gonna be darker than 25%. you cant just add up the numbers like that. imagine getting 10% on a car. you cant make that lighter by adding 35% to it. same way, if u have 35% and u put 10% over it, you would have a darker shade not 25% make sense?

my cousins truck had stock 35 in the back windows and when he put 10 all the way around the back is alot darker than the front. had he told me what he was gonna do it wouldve came out alot better........


if it was me....i'd throw another tint on top of that but do it at a really good place so they do it right and make sure the place has a lifetime warranty.........

 

 

The only think I would be worried about is if the original tint were to bubble. If you have a tint glued on top of the initial tints, and the initial tints bubble, both layers of tint would have to come off...that's gonna cost you a hell of a lot more. If I were you, strip the old tint, use some compound (goo gone, or a good tint remover) and clean off the windows once you're done with a good glass cleaner (20/20, invisible glass), and then restart the tinting process.

 

I've layered tint before and its not a huge deal (rarely on car windows tho). I would avoid and just use a single layer if possible. SC is right about the quality of the initial tint job. It really has to be perfect.

The tint % refers to the amount of light that passes through. The lower the number, the darker. To calculate effective total light transmission, you have to multiply the percentages.

So if you lay 20% on top of 20%, you'll get roughly 5% tint (very very dark). .2 * .2 = .04, or 4%.

You can reverse the math if you want to figure out how much you need to use to get to a certain darkness. You have 35%, you want 10%. So .35 * X = .1, solve for X which equals about 28-29%. In this case, I would probably just layer another 35% on there.

There may be other factors that make the equation more complex (I don't have a PhD in light mechanics), but it is a good rough gauge of the overall percentage.

 

Can the rear window tint be removed safely without damaging the 'dots'?

 

I would say stay with the 35%. The 35% dark tint gives a classy look any thing darker looks ghetto IMHO.

 

Well if I had to guess, the rear dots will be fine once the tints come off. However there will probably be a lot of remaining glue from the tint in between those dots. You will need to clean it very thoroughly to make sure no extra glue adheres, or else there will be a large blotch under the tint. And you must make sure that when you're removing the tint, you are extra careful when going over the defroster lines. If you break one of the lines, you have to repair it, or else the entire defroster will not work.

 

Good thing to consider when you are thinking about going to an illegal tint% is your interior colour.. If you have a dark interior the tint is going to look much darker..

I didn't think it would matter too much until I saw the same tint% on a car with black and a car with beige interior.. The dark one looked illegal to the avg. "joe"... the other looked dark but since you have a lighter background colour didn't look BLACK..it works much better IMO..