Window tint - how much does it lower interior temps?

[Jeff N.]

Black on black car - getting cooked out. Seattle heat wuss I guess. How much would a light tint help keep the car cool?

[Zeuk in Oz]

From someone who lives in a warmer climate - worth doing.
Effect depends on amount of tinting, but certainly saves the interior of cars from effects of sun. Presumably equally useful for human skin !
Other advantage, especially with side windows is that the glass doesn't shatter in an accident - the tint holds the glass together.

[Anton CH.]

If it's hot, it's always going to be hot. I haven't noticed any temp difference. It does help however with sunlight shining in your face so you don't have to squint as much and same goes at night when other cars are driving behind you so you don't get blinded. I think those reasons alone are worth having it.

[Brian C.]

...I can tell you all about solar radiation. My E34 was also black/black and for the 1st 6 months I had no tint. In the summer, it was unbearable to get in, not to mention any poor soul that was a backseat passenger. One summer I went on a trip to The Florida Keys and the place we stayed at had a white, crushed gravel driveway. Talk about an oven! It was getting the heat from top and bottom. I did a maximum tint job and it helped to some extent, but I'd say that something even more effective was when I bought, and regularly used a refective windshield shade.

Before the shade I kept thinking that I really needed to get the A/C checked....again and again....but what it turned out to be was that the sun would come through the windshield and onto the black dash. The entire dash and dash innards are almost all black plastic or metal and became a perfect heat sponge. From 9am until I'd go to lunch, it was just sitting in the sun, soaking up all that heat. I'd get in and start the car and run the A/C and nothing would happen. It was just blowing warm air through a really, really hot area with all the duct work. It would easily take 20-25 minutes before I'd feel any coolness at all coming out of the vents. When I started using the shade, it would at least keep the dash area 10-20 degrees cooler so it would take much less time for the air to start coming out cool. Before, without tint and the sunshade it was a good 20 minutes until I'd feel the least bit of coolness from the vents. After the tint and the sunshade, I'd say it started to put out cooler air in about 4-5 minutes. A big difference.

Also, the top of the rear seatback was getting more and more crispy without the tint. After I tinted, I sort of "overdosed" the seatback with leather conditioner and it started to come back a bit.

I'm voting for as dark a tint as legal, and get yourself an good reflective sunshade on the Internet somewhere. Lots of places sell the roll-up ones that are custom fit for the E34.

Brian C.

[rickm]

I have a dark silver E34 that I just tinted with the "legal" tint for NC. I live in the mountains but have several remote sites that are in south central NC around Charlotte, where it gets really hot. None of these places seem to have trees. :P

The tint (it supposedly has UV limiting on it) hasn't really kept the car from getting so hot but it has helped to keep the seats from being frying pans. The air will be roasting when I open up the door but the seats aren't unGodly warm to the touch. Since I've started to use a windshield shade as well as leaving the sunroof cracked the car has been a lot more comfortable in the afternoons. You can also get rear window shades, I had my rear window tinted. When driving it's much cooler. The sun isn't beating down on my so hard anymore, before I could easily get a mild sunburn from one of my drives. :P Not so with the tint.

[Guelphguy]

I can't live without tint anymore, it is the first thing I do to every car I get.....
Keeps interior, dark rich looking without sun bleach...
Keeps people from looking in easily to see what they can steal...
Looks Gangsta...lol
Hides who you are ridn' with...lol
Not sure if it is cooler...but it is "cool" man...
Yeah, no nead for all time shades wearin'

[Guelphguy]

Oh yeah and I heard on the radio the other day that "statics" show that males between 25-35 driving "sporty" cars with TINTED windows are more likely to engage in acts of road rage....lol

[Paul in NZ]

i second the windscree sunshade.With a rear sunblind and maybe the side shades you would be cool,I also leave the sunroof tilted in hot weather,and i have black on black....

[pundit]

Oh yeah and I heard on the radio the other day that "statics" show that males between 25-35 driving "sporty" cars with TINTED windows are more likely to engage in acts of road rage....lol
You talkin' to me?!! PUNK!! :p

Well you can't be, because I don't have tinted windows and I'm in the wrong age group! :)

[Robin-535im]

Not that you could do this in Seattle... but opening a window lets some of the hot air out and can make as big or bigger difference than tint... but it also lets in rain! Not a problem here in the southwest.

The sunshade in the window will do a huge amount for you, because the windshield and rear glass let in the huge majority of the light. What happens is the visible light comes in the front and rear (not so much the sides because they're usually at a sharper angle to the incoming sunlight, especially at the hottest times of day) and all that black leather/plastic heat up. Even though the glass blocks some UV coming in, the hot interior emits at all wavelengths and you get the greenhouse effect - the UV can't get back out once it's in!

Since you can't tint the windscreen, and there's a big black heat sponge (dashboard), I'd venture to say that maybe 50% of the heat in your car comes in from the windshield, and maybe another 20% from the rear, on average.

Let me know if you find a good one for the E34, I'm in the market for one too.

[Jeff N.]

Check out Bavauto.com. They have at least 3 or 4 to choose from for the E34. Some are even on sale....whooeee.

[Bill R.]

we had the real sunshine states....:) Don't you guys have things like clouds and rain that block sunshine..and those hurricane thingies
I gotta agree with Brian ,especially since i play with that laser pyrometer that i have now every chance i get.. last week on a black car exterior i finally broke 200F, its been cooler this week. I've always had tint on most of my cars, my personal preference is the lightest tint i can get with the most heat and uv rejection possible.. There are some clear tints now that reject heat and light pretty good also... The metalized do work the best though except they screw up radio reception on the am band on the rear window... Another thing that i've always had on the 535 is a eclipse self retracting sunshade on the windshield, when we got the new 3 series wagon my wife had to have one right away... i tried to get on locally instead and found a once piece self retracting for 29 bucks, i put it on and she hated it and carped about it for a week straight untill i ordered the 2 piece eclipse brand that we've alway had in our cars that works so well. Its aluminized fabric on one side so its very reflective and when retracted it stays up by the a pillars out of the way. They are at this site (http://www.autogeek.net/ecsun.html)
If you check around on the net you can find eclipse brand elsewhere for less but this site had the nifty demo that shows you how they work... We paid 49 for the 3 wagon . Another thing we have on the 5 is a rear carpet mat like a dash mat for the rear and it has a section thats fitted to cover the top of the rear seat and the rear seat headrests since they rot away in the sun here quickly too... I think it was a dashmat brand but i've had it so long i don't remember.. The 5 also has a dashmat too







...I can tell you all about solar radiation. My E34 was also black/black and for the 1st 6 months I had no tint. In the summer, it was unbearable to get in, not to mention any poor soul that was a backseat passenger. One summer I went on a trip to The Florida Keys and the place we stayed at had a white, crushed gravel driveway. Talk about an oven! It was getting the heat from top and bottom. I did a maximum tint job and it helped to some extent, but I'd say that something even more effective was when I bought, and regularly used a refective windshield shade.

Before the shade I kept thinking that I really needed to get the A/C checked....again and again....but what it turned out to be was that the sun would come through the windshield and onto the black dash. The entire dash and dash innards are almost all black plastic or metal and became a perfect heat sponge. From 9am until I'd go to lunch, it was just sitting in the sun, soaking up all that heat. I'd get in and start the car and run the A/C and nothing would happen. It was just blowing warm air through a really, really hot area with all the duct work. It would easily take 20-25 minutes before I'd feel any coolness at all coming out of the vents. When I started using the shade, it would at least keep the dash area 10-20 degrees cooler so it would take much less time for the air to start coming out cool. Before, without tint and the sunshade it was a good 20 minutes until I'd feel the least bit of coolness from the vents. After the tint and the sunshade, I'd say it started to put out cooler air in about 4-5 minutes. A big difference.

Also, the top of the rear seatback was getting more and more crispy without the tint. After I tinted, I sort of "overdosed" the seatback with leather conditioner and it started to come back a bit.

I'm voting for as dark a tint as legal, and get yourself an good reflective sunshade on the Internet somewhere. Lots of places sell the roll-up ones that are custom fit for the E34.

Brian C.

[Brian C.]

;)

Funny how most people will complain about how the humidity here makes it unbearable. But I think it must be an aquired thing to like, or more correctly "get used to". Last time I was in AZ was maybe 8-9 years ago, and even though it was hot, what drove me crazy was how dry it was. My lips were all cracked and my sinuses didn't recover for a week! And at around 95-100 degrees, it still didn't feel as hot as it does here some July afternoons with the temps around 91 but at 80-90% humidity. There's nothing like the usual 3pm/22 minute monsoon to get the parking lots steaming. You just get used to it. At least we can always thank Willis Carrier (http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/carrier.html) for his brilliance! :D

And ya know.....I did forget to mention to Jeff the AM radio blackout with metallic tints. It's a good point to concider.

Brian C.

[RobPatt]

...along w/a black car. but got the grey interior which makes big difference, and the front reflective sun visor, and the metallic silver tint, and screwed up AM... ( was wondering what the problem was... but thought AM reception came via the headunit itself & rear antenna was for FM... ?? ) Going to look into the retracting shade, esp for the rear.

[genphreak]

Its all about flow rates. Heat in and heat out.

In Australia we get more energy in the sun's rays than just about anywhere. Tints are mandatory. They work by absornbing the sun's heat evergy into the glass (which then radiates most of it to the ambient air outside). Metal tints reflect the sun a little (but not much in practice) which also helps.

Regardless, one is best to get heat out by dropping your windows and turning on AC. A little while after (ie one really should wait) the interior temp gets down to something near outside ambient temp (even if it is 100 degrees) put the windows up and let the AC do the rest of the work. Making AC cool a hot interior on its own takes too long and is hard work (=wear+fuel), and on a birght hot 100 degree day it will be much more than that inside the car.

Tips- Try to reduce heat in by parking in the shade and using tinted windows- lighter body colours (yuk). Use a fold-up silver reflective screen shade to keep the dash from overheating and becoming that 'heat sponge' previously mentioned- it keeps radiating heat long after you get in and start driving.

When it is really hot sun I put the rear sunshade up (as well as the tinted rear window) Keeping the heat out makes the interior components last longer ;) GP