OK I am just going to tell you striaght up. I stole this off of the Popular Mechanics website.
I will try this soon on my own car but I haven’t done it yet. I’ll report back after and tell you how it went.
Start by slitting open a large plastic trash bag into a single large panel–any color is fine. Spray a little water on the outside of the back window glass and use it to temporarily stick the bag to the window. Use your single-edge blade to cut the bag approximately 1 in. smaller than the glass. Add a couple of spoonfuls of household ammonia to your water sprayer and spray it on the tinting film. (The ammonia will stink–do this outdoors with the car doors open.) Use this to stick the bag to the film. If needed, add some more spray between the bag and the film to keep things wet and sticking. In about 20 minutes, the adhesive will have softened, and you should be able to peel off the tint more easily. Don’t scrape, not even with your credit card. Remove the remaining adhesive with a very soft cloth and more ammonia or Goo Gone. If you must rub the glass to lift off old adhesive, rub along the length of the heater grid conductors, not across them.
When I got my RS, there was some tint in the car that was on there for over 10years. I dont like tint at all so I began to remove it. I used everything INCLUDING Aircraft paint remover and other very strong solvents. NOTHING would get it off, including this method you mentioned. Then I used a heat gun on the outside of the window and it worked perfectly. Have a friend help you, and one of you very slowly move the heat gun across the outside part of the glass. You move the gun as your friend peels away the tint. Go very slowly so you dont rip the tint. You want to get it all at once. Works great and its very clean since 99% of the glue goes with the paper and doesnt stay on the glass. For the very little glue that was left over, I used 3M’s Film and glue remover. Worked great. HTH
Good to know! Did you use a real heat gun or just a hair dryer. I don’t have a heat gun.
Have you tried the method that’s under the Teg tips? I was thinking of trying it myself.
I used a real heat gun (was working at Honda at the time) and yes I tried the Teg Tips method. Actually I tried that first, and it didnt work at all for me. Like I said, my tint was on the car for a decade, so it was a pain in the ass to remove, but the heat gun worked very good.
try the bag method on a hot day and let the car sit outside under direct sunlight for about 20 minutes and then peel it off. or better than the heat gun method, that takes for ever to do and you cant do it by yourself, use a steamer on the inside of the glass. thats what i use at work and it works good to remove old purple bubbling tint. and if there is adhesive on the window after you remove the film just use some soapy water and really fine steel wool. 00 or 0 grade, if you use something else like say a razor blade it will kill the defroster lines.
The trash bag method is VERY VERY complicated. I tried doing it myself, and there was no way the bag would stick to the window. When you try to put the bag with the wet glass, a corner would fall then the rest. It gets too messy and wet. When you do try to pull off the tint in one piece, it’ll break no matter how careful you are. What I did was use a sharp razor and that flat handle thing from home depot. Basically, all you need to do is wet the the glass with ammonia and CAREFULLY use the razor to strip. Try to get as much crap out as you can then use an adhesive remover to remove the rest (citristrip or goo gone). It took me 2 days to do all 5 windows (I could of done it in one whole day), but I’m happy with the results - no scratches, nice 'n clear bright glass.
I used a razor and nail polish remover. My side window got broke out so I had to get a new one. It had purple tint and I then had to remove my passenger side windows tint to match it. Now I have only back and quarter panel tint.
My driver/passenger’s window tint was peeling and discolored. The only reason I didn’t want to remove it was due to its functionality on a hot day. In hawaii, its sunny all year long…Unfortunately, while cleaning my windows, the tint got stuck to my rag and totally ripped, that’s when I knew I had to remove everything.
The correct method with using the trash bag is to do it on a hot day with a black trash bag in direct sunlight and proably leave it for more than 20 minutes.
