A lot of my friends who have tinted windows have a lot of bumps and air bubbles and crap on their window tinting. How is this caused? I'm too paranoid that mine will turn into that. (Not that I don't take care of my car - if anything I'm super anal on how clean my car is, which is exactly why I'm asking this.)

Thanks.

Did they do it themselves? cause if you get it done professionally, it wont get air bubbles

Cause whoever did it, didnt prep it worth a shit.

A good way to prep a window is to use soap water(preferbly dawn liquid detergent used for dishes). It cleans everything off the windows.

Spray the tint down with the same solution and apply it to glass. use a scraper and start from the center to pushing down the film getting all the air pockets out. then you use a heat gun to help it cure/dry.

you also have to wait a few days for the tint to dry, meaning dont use your windows or it might have a chance of gettin stuck and bubbling.

its also recommended you dont use loud sound systems during the cure time cause the bass causes the air to bounce around and might have a chance of flexing your glass and making the tint stick up some.

how do i know this? one of my closest friends does tint prof. and ive watched him do countless jobs including my vette and my moms impala.

Recommend you get it done professionally if you don't know what you're doing.
I'm fairly sure warranties are offered at little to no cost, so even if they've *bleep*ed up, you can get it fixed without an issue.

Agreed with SVT and Snowfox. If it's done right it won't do that. Me and my buddies use the same guy for tint and audio stuff. He has a lifetime warranty on all his tint. He's very good and i've never had a problem. The only thing about it is that you will pay for the better job. One friend of mine cheeped out and saved about 100 bucks on a guy we had never been to and his tint was pealing about 5 months after it was done. He ended up going to the shop we go to so he had to pay twice. LOL!

I had my whole windshield done at 30% and side/rear hatch windows at limo/cop tint all done for 375 bucks.

Basically:

Thanks Captain Obvious!

quote BlindSight

Thanks Captain Obvious!

Thanks guys. Just for the record, my car did have its windows tinted professionally quite a while ago, and still to this day they look awesome. I was just afraid stuff like smoking or whatever effected them in the long run.

As far as long term, smoking would basically build up a film on the outer layers of anything in your car, including the tint. Shouldn't be able to get between the film and the glass, though, so I think you'll be fine in that regard.
Anyone who thinks otherwise feel free to correct me.

I don't know about smoking. It MIGHT be able to after a long time, but I doubt it. If part of the film was torn and the hole was exposed, then I could imagine it happening, but otherwise, I doubt smoking would do very much.