A lot of new vehicles have tint film on their windows. Some vehicle owners elect to have tint applied to their windows because they want to shade the sunlight from their eyes or give themselves more privacy from the other drivers on the road. A removable adhesive material is used to apply the tint to the windows. Since it is removable, you can easily take off the tint if necessary.
You won’t have any problem removing the tint on your windshield and side windows. But when it comes to the rear window, you might have a little difficulty because of the defroster lines. These are the horizontal lines on the rear window which allow it to defrost in the first place.
When you have window tint film above the defroster lines, you need to be extra careful if you try to remove the tint. It would be so easy to accidentally scrape or cut the defroster lines with a razor or scaping tool. Don’t let that happen to you because it’ll cost you a lot more money to fix the defroster if those lines are cut.
The Steps to Window Tint Removal
The most appropriate way to remove tint from your rear window is to remove the whole tint piece altogether. It is not difficult to do this, but you need to know which steps to take. The important thing is to remove the window tint safely so that your defroster is not affected.
Here are the steps:
Step #1 – Grab a black plastic garbage bag and cut it open to make it a big plastic sheet. You’ll want the width of the sheet to cover your entire back window.
Step #2 – Before applying the plastic sheet to the exterior of the back window, spray water onto the glass first. Now apply the plastic sheet over the wet glass and smooth it out with your fingers and hands. Do some trimming around the edges to ensure that the plastic matches the shape of the window.
Step #3 – Take off the sheet from the exterior of the back window by peeling it off slowly. Spray water on the interior of the back window and then apply the sheet to this area. Make sure the sheet is pressed against the window tint film so that it is secure.
Step #4 – Now comes the fun part. Find an area where your car has direct exposure to the sunlight from the sky. Park your car in this area so that your rear window is getting most of the sun exposure. Turn the heater on high in your car and activate the rear window defroster. Get out of the car and leave it alone like this for 60 minutes.
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Step #5 – Come back to the car and turn off the heater and defroster. Take a razor blade and use it to peel away the tint from one of the corners of the rear window. Do this slowly because you’ll want to be able to lift the whole corner off the window. If you end up shredding the tint, then you’ll have a problem.
Step #6 – Once you’ve peeled away a corner of the tint, pull both the plastic and the tint in a “downward and away” motion. You must be firm, slow, and long with your motions or else you’ll tear the tint. Torn tint leaves adhesive material behind on the window, which is a nightmare to get off.
Step #7 – If the tint was successfully removed, the last step is to clean the interior of the rear window. Just take a soft cotton cloth and wipe down the interior glass with it. Any little pieces of tint still on the window should get swiped away easily from the cloth.
