Annie, here's more about the tint.

Tints have oils or plasticizers in them. The ammonia based cleaners
strip out the oils, ---try cleaning your stove top with ammonia after
frying fish or something and you will see how ammonia works on oils -
and leaves your tint brittle. It then cracks, peels and changes colors.

Armor-All is a cleaner designed to add oils, and works on vinyls, etc,
but can make a mess on tint. Adding oil back to tint doesn't really
work. It will streak up and make a miss. To test this try putting
Armor-all on a mirror in your house and check the results.

The Johnsons Shampoo is best and cheapest, but if you just have to have
a commercially prepared cleaner Glass Plus works.

Regards,

John Rodgers
88 GL Driver
Coyne, Annie wrote:

>The windows of the 88 Westy I inherited from my Arizona-resident father have
>deeply tinted windows.  Great for privacy and heat reduction, though backing
>up is a real pain.  I recall seeing a recent thread which discussed film
>tinting - if memory serves, the author has a son in the business, and he
>provided some good pointers.  Try as I might, though, I cannot pull the post
>up in the archives.
>
>In any event, the author mentioned something about cleaning film-tinted
>windows - not to use an ammonia-based product, as I recall.  But - what to
>use?  My van is in great shape, but the windows are NASTY - it sat idle for
>a few years, and they are really grimy.  No matter what I use to try to
>clean them, though, they just get grimier, almost gummy. It seems as if I
>might be breaking down a layer of the film itself - I can't believe all that
>gunk is just dirt.  I've tried three different commercial glass cleaners,
>and even old-fashioned vinegar and newspapers (which worked great on the
>plain glass, but was no help on the tinted side).
>
>Anybody have any suggestions? I'm almost ready to pull the tint off
>entirely, reasoning that it's not so sunny here in Wisconsin - but it seems
>to be in relatively good shape, except for the gunk.
>
>Thanks in advance - Annie
>
>
>