Just need a little help here. The early xA's (I have an '04 born on 7/19/04) came with all clear glass. Now my little bugger gets piping hot when sitting in the sun and I want to tint it up a bit.

Any suggestions?

My options are:
Pay a aftermarket shop $250 to tint it
Buy the film myself and make a crappy-looking mess of it
Shoot out the windows with a pellet gun and place an insurance claim to get all my windows replaced with factory 2005 xA glass

Thoughts??????

I would say have the shop do it :wink:. Might seem like a lot but it aint. They can tint it the right way & even let you know how dark it can be & still be legal in your area. I have a 1980 El Camino & when that thing was running I had a quote for getting the windows tinted & they said $250 on that thing. So if you can get a car with a lot more glass then a El Camino tinted for the same price go for it. Just my $.02

The 2005 xAs come with tinted glass?! are you sure? :?

It might only be an option, but you can get the glass tinted. That's why I thought about the "glass incident" route for getting tinted glass.

J

tint is a dealer option, though its a really light tint. I would go with an aftermarket tint and let a professional do it! Around here we can get a good quality tint with a lifetime gaurantee for $100.00.

Yeah, I'd look around, there should be tons of places that'll do it for about $125.

Anyone know what tinting percentage is the legal limit in CA? I know my xA will look phat with the darkest tinting possible.

Thanks!

Dark Cherry '05. My new baby, have had it 7 days!!!
Options: TYC tailights, spoiler, 18" rims, cold air intake, fog lamps, front strut stabilizer, keyless entry w/ alarm. What's next...?

Here's the Calif vehicle code on it.

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc26708.htm

The place I went to told me it was legal to have tint on the driver's and front passenger's windows, so I paid $165 to tint all 5 windows. Then, thanks to other Scion owners, I found out the truth, and removed the tint from those two windows, to avoid tickets.

I used to live in California. Unless things have changed since then, you can do whatever you want behind door pillars. On the driver and passenger side windows, you’re not supposed to have anything, but you can almost always get away with medium (35 percent). When I was there, I had an old Toyota Corona wagon that I had painted black, and every window on that thing, except for the windshield, was tinted with two layers of 5 percent limo. I could barely see at night, but boy, did that thing look cool. The windows looked spray-painted black. I got tickets regularly, but I also had a second set of front windows that I got at a junkyard for $40. Every time the CHP got me, I’d swap in the clear windows, have the fix-it ticket signed off, then go home and put the double limos back in. I got to where I could do all of this in about an hour. The police station was a five-minute drive from my house, and each window swap took just a few minutes with a screwdriver and a socket set. I plan to limo my xA when it arrives. I will be living in a state where it’s legal, so I won’t need two sets of windows unless I visit CA.

From what I remember it is illegal to have tint in the front windows. The rest dont matter. The lighter the tint in the front windows the less chance you have of getting pulled over. I want to tint my windows but will look nasty without tint in the front windows. To end it, I have bad luck with pigs! I mean police. :D

From what I was told by some unfortunate Scion owners and by a CHP, Cali courts took it upon themselves to reinterpret the law... tinted window violations are no longer a fix-it ticket, but are moving violations. They charge much bigger fines now.
My XA looked way better with the dark front windows, but the fine would have been a hundred dollars higher than the cost of the tints.

It sux, but I can see the cop's viewpoint... It's easier to stay safe catching crooks if the bad guys are behind clear windows rather than limo tint.

my brother got his xA done for $150, shop around

I thought...

In CA, you are allowed any color tint EXCEPT: Red, Blue, & Amber. YouR rear passenger windows, and 3 rear windows can be tinted as dark as you want. You are also allowed something like a 6 inch strip on your winshield (in the upper most part of course).

The bad news is that youR front driver's side window and passenger's side windows can only LEGALLY be tinted to allowing 70% of visible light into the car. If you've ever seen 70% film.. you will notice that its pretty much the same thing as the regular window :P

<< tinted window violations are no longer a fix-it ticket, but are moving violations. They charge much bigger fines now. >>

Ouch! Glad I left CA when I did. I bet my old double-limo wagon would be impounded nowadays. I’d better rethink my plan to limo my xA. While I won’t be living in CA, I may want to visit there on occasion. SCI FIRE, do you know if the CA cops crack down on tinted cars from out of state? Just wondering if I could get away with the old “but it’s legal in *my* state” excuse.

but they know its not, cause I don't think limo is legal anywhere.

Dang, you are correct. I had no idea. I just assumed that any state that legalizes front window tint approves of anything. Here is a chart summarizing each state’s tint limit for each window:

http://www.tintdude.com/ntoo.html

The good news for me is that I’ll be living in the most permissive state in the union: New Mexico. I can (legally) have 20 percent (which is dark, not limo) all the way around. If I drive anywhere else, I’ll be too dark. It’s an outrage!

Dang, you are correct. I had no idea. I just assumed that any state that legalizes front window tint approves of anything. Here is a chart summarizing each state’s tint limit for each window:

http://www.tintdude.com/ntoo.html

The good news for me is that I’ll be living in the most permissive state in the union: New Mexico. I can (legally) have 20 percent (which is dark, not limo) all the way around. If I drive anywhere else, I’ll be too dark. It’s an outrage!

What does that AS1 stand for?

Not sure exactly what it stands for, but I gather that it means line of sight. In other words, the point on the windshield that is at eye level when you are behind the wheel.

yea 20 is good

Why don't you just tint your front windows however dark you want, and then roll the windows down when you see a cop? I had 5% on my old civic (http://xomixx.com/photos.html#civic) and never got a ticket. Of course, I also had to roll the windows down to back up at night, otherwise I couldn't even see the mirrors.

Yeah, I've thought of this. My old Toyota wagon with double 5 percent had crank windows, so it was hard to roll them down fast enough. Power windows would make it easier, but sometimes the cops see you before you see them.

I hear you on backing up at night. With double limo, I could hardly see my mirrors even in the daytime. After a couple of years, I moved to the mountains where there were no streetlights, and at that point I gave up and went back to single limo in the front.

I should add that when I first got tint, I was using medication for acne and had a doctor's note saying I needed to avoid sunlight. Some cops let me go after seeing the note. Others gave me a ticket and told me to show my note to a judge. Eventually the note got out of date and I stopped using the medicine, so I had to take my chances.