Caring for New Window Film

Park in the sun if you can. Heat speeds curing, so a car tinted in July and left out cures faster than the same car tinted in January. It's the one time of year the Texas summer is doing you a favour.

Normal in the first week or two

• Haze or a slightly milky look. That's mounting solution evaporating out through the film.
• Small water pockets, especially near edges and along curved glass. They shrink and disappear.
• A few tiny specks visible only up close, at an angle, in direct light.
• The rear window looking worse than the sides. It's the largest, most curved panel and it clears last.

Call us about

• Bubbles that are growing rather than shrinking, or that are still there after 30 days.
• Any edge that has lifted or is peeling.
• A scratch, score or tear.
• Haze that hasn't cleared after a month.

The honest test is time. Almost everything that looks wrong in week one is gone by week four. Almost nothing that's still there at week four goes away on its own.

• Outside of the glass: wash whenever you like, straight away, however you normally do it. The film is on the inside.
• Inside of the glass: wait two weeks after installation, then clean with an ammonia-free cleaner or plain water.
• Use a soft microfibre cloth or a rubber squeegee. No paper towel, no newspaper, no abrasive pads.
• No scrapers, blades or ice-scrapers on the inside of the glass, ever.
• Watch the top edge when the window is down — that edge is the film's most vulnerable point for its whole life, not just during curing.

Anything with a suction cup or an adhesive pad bonds to the film rather than to the glass. When it comes off — and it will, in a Texas car park in August — it takes film with it. That's customer-caused damage and it isn't covered.

• Phone mounts, GPS units, dash cameras and radar detectors: mount them to the dash, or to glass we've deliberately left clear.
• Toll tags and parking permits: these need bare glass to stick to. Tell us before installation and we'll cut a window for it.
• Stickers of any kind: not on the film.
• Sunshades: fine, they don't stick to anything.

Every film we install is non-metallic — HiTek Carbon IR, HiTek Ceramic IR, SunTek Evolve — so nothing here interferes with your phone, GPS, radio, toll tag or keyless entry. If you've heard that tint blocks signal, that's true of older metallic films and not of ours.

Your rear defroster works normally through film. Use it as you always would. The only caution is physical: don't scrape or pick at the inside of the rear glass, because the grid lines sit directly under the film and both come off together.

There's nothing to maintain. Cured film needs no treatment, no sealant and no special product. Ceramic film doesn't degrade in the way dyed film does — HiTek Ceramic IR and SunTek Evolve hold their colour and their heat rejection rather than fading toward purple.

If the car is sold, the warranty ends with your ownership. If you're re-tinting later, old film has to come off before new film goes on — $120 for a full car when we're installing on the same visit, since the glass only gets prepped once.