Window Tint and Paint Protection Film Installed!

I dressed up my Passat this week with window tint and paint protection film. I had both on my 2014 and I was very happy with how the tint kept the car cooler and and protection film kept a lot of road debris and abuse off the paint. I went with the same products I had before, Llumar & Xpel. Specifically I used Llumar Stratos 35 and Xpel Ultimate Plus. This stuff is pricey but it works as advertised.

Front 3/4 view.


Rear 3/4 view.


35% is the legal max in IL for tint so that's why I used it. The entire front of the car is now covered with the protection film. This includes full bumper, full fenders, full hood, mirrors, headlights, A pillars, 6" of the leading edge of the roof, door sills, door openings, door edges, the bottom 6" of both doors, and a trunk strip along the top of the back bumper. It looks great and you have to be within 6" of the car to see it. I like it!

Anyone else out there tint their windows and/or install clear protection film? If so post your photos here! Give a description of what you used and why. Keep the NMS Passat love going.

Alright how much you dish out for that? I'm guessing close to 2K?

I was quoted +580 for stratos for the Alltrack, may have to suffer with Pinnacle F1

My '14 Passat also legal tint at 35%, I have lamin x on headlights and fog lights.

2015 Passat with 20% ceramic tint. Not quite legal, but meh.

Before:

After:

Nice!

I have had some much darker tint on the front door windows and the rear window and after a time I found it was awful to try and see out at night.


My Passat now has the legally allowed tint and I have no trouble seeing out at night.


Where I live the law states that if a Police officer cannot see the driver they can force you to have the tint removed, though many ricers I see here you cannot even tell there is someone behind the wheel.

I had the clear bra done on the hood, fenders, and door edges for $150, I skipped the bumper because there was already some damage so eventually it’ll get repainted. For the window tint I went ceramic, 35% on the front windows and 5% the rest (legal in AZ). The tint cost me $50, one of the benefits of working in dealerships. My back windows are dark, really dark, but I no longer miss the auto dimming rear view mirror this car doesn’t have.

BroncoAZ said:

I had the clear bra done on the hood, fenders, and door edges for $150, I skipped the bumper because there was already some damage so eventually it’ll get repainted. For the window tint I went ceramic, 35% on the front windows and 5% the rest (legal in AZ). The tint cost me $50, one of the benefits of working in dealerships. My back windows are dark, really dark, but I no longer miss the auto dimming rear view mirror this car doesn’t have.

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What exactly would you call that clear bra? For a price like that I'd like to look around and see what I could find for mine. I do remember my Dad's '84 K30 with something like that though around the bottom of the bed wheel well. It turned yellow and cracked, and was a pain to get off eventually. If it is better than that I'm really interested.

Clear bra is made up of clear film (usually from 3M) that's cut specifically to fit your car and is adhered to the hood, bumper, fronts of the fenders, and usually mirrors, and sometimes headlights. I've taken to putting them on most of my cars.

You can't see it, except when the car is dirty you can sometimes see where it ends, especially on a dark car. But given the poor quality of paint these days I think they're essential if you're going to keep the car a while. Unfortunately, they're not inexpensive.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company...9313+8710859+8711017+8716713+3294857497&rt=r3

Well said IndigoBlueWagon. I had it on my dark blue Touareg for 7 years in the AZ Desert, there was no discoloration or issues. Dealer cost is about $400 for the full kit, so they would probably retail it for $700 or so. I do see some exotic cars (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Nissan GTR, etc) where they do much more coverage like the entire hood and the front edge of the roof above the windshield.

There's also different grades of paint protection films, 3M has been around the longest but players like xpel and others have "self healing" properties that beg an extra 50-80% in cost.

Its right up there with ceramic coatings and the voodoo it does to the paint so they can charge well over 1K.