With the Supreme Court of India enforcing a ban on all types of sun control films on vehicles in India, car owners are queuing up in front of Auto accessory shops for sun film removal. Most of the service people charge something like Rs. 250/- to 500/- just to remove the sun film and the worst case is that you have to be in a long queue to get this simple service done. Another issue is that many of them don’t even have the patience to clean things up properly as the demand is high for their services.
Removing the sun film from your car windows is not as complicated as you think. Definitely, it cannot be as bad as installing sun films or tints. After some careful thinking I thought of doing it myself on my car and it turned to be an easier task which I did in under 15 minutes and saved me 500 bucks. And the best thing, of course, was the cleanest possible job because you are working on your own baby!
How to Remove Sun Film from Cars?
I took the help of my son Aditya and shot this video of how exactly you can remove car window tints or solar films? Well, I am talking about the ‘Indian’ way of doing it as there are simpler and neater ways (Steaming etc) of doing it if you happen to be abroad.
So here’s the video. Please go through it and let me know how your sun film removal experiment go.
Additional Tips
If you have installed some high end brands like 3M sun film, I must say that your life is a lot easier as hardly any glue stains remain after pulling out the film. If you use brands like Garware or even cheaper local brands, perhaps you may have a lot more to clean up of the residual glue stains.
Also, if you leave your car under hot sun for more than an hour, the sun film peeling process gets a lot easier.
Be very careful with the back light glass (i.e. the rear windshield) of your car. You don’t want to damage the defogger lines of your car by scraping them too hard.
In any case, all that you need to do sun control film removal are the following:
- Paint scraper (thin) – You will get it in paint shops and it costs Rs.5 per blade
- A spray bottle or old/used liquid soap dispenser
- 5 to 10 ml of regular liquid dish wash detergent
- A craft knife or razor blade
So how exactly do we do it? Please watch the video on my Youtube channel.
thanks as lot for the information and the video. it came very handy to me and my many friends. instead of using scrapper for cleaning the residue on the wind screen, what i did was that i just soaked a cloth in petrol and wiped all the reidue. everything got cleaned immediately. one can use common spirit or thinner as well.
Thanks Parag for your comment. As much as possible, I would avoid petroleum products on cars – just in case of any spill, thinner etc can leave permanent marks on plastics. Petrol is not as dangerous as thinner or turpentine though. Spirit, yes, I would think it’s safer.
Some of the filament installations (especially on cheaper cars) may get loosened with solvents like thinner. Having said that, even scraping has to be done very carefully 🙂
Saw your video. It’s such a simple solution. I can’t understand why people don’t do it themselves. Maybe, if it was something mechanical or electrical job in the vehicle going to a expert is reasonable.There is no expertise involved here at all. Dam good job Ajith.
Thanks Veerendra. You are right about the simplicity part since no mechanical or electrical work is involved in this case.
A very good information through video. Thank you.
hi Ajith,
thanks a lot for the tips. I did try it today myself. it worked pretty well. I used dish-wash liquid with scrape. got some scratches on the driver side glass. I did a mistake of trying driver side first. I was better while removing the glue-residue of passenger side as I used the scraper very gently. I had to wait for few minutes after applying the dish-wash liquid.
Patience is what required here.
Is there any hint on removing the scratches on my driver side glass?
Rajesh,
Sorry to hear that you ended up scratching. If you spray the soapy liquid properly and use the scraper in proper angle (as explained in the video) it will never scratch. I do not know if any scratch removing products are available in India but I have definitely seen those in Walmarts abroad. Even if you get hold of such a product (light abrasives) you better be very careful with them as well.
Hi,
It was very simple.
I have taken the filaments out but stuck with the gum
It is not coming out even with detergents
Now I will use the scraper and TRY to remove it
WISH ME
For very stubborn gum stains, you can try rubbing with a petrol soaked soft cloth. But that’s not required for most types of gum stains.
Thanks and very useful info.Take ur precious time anddone with good cause.
Hi Ajit,
Thanks a ton for your very helpful video. I was able to remove the film from my Santro quite easily. Earlier I was trying to get someone to do it and could not get a dependable person. Thanks once again.
The back glass of my car had year long hardened glue from the sunscreen removal activity. The garage refused to clean the back glass as it was lined with defogger. I tried various solvents, acetone, alcohol, thinner, Colin, and diesel. And finally what worked is the calcium and sediment deposit remover for taps and fittings..
A simple but hard cleaning with cloth and liquid worked.
Very useful information. Thanks a lot for this.