The volkswagon Beetle

To those of you who can 1 piece the beetle, and do each window without screwing it up... I salute you. I just spent 8 hours working on my first one and let me tell you... I DID NOT CHARGE ENOUGH!!!! . for all my frustration! I went through nearly 50' of Carbon 35. I'm going to begin pricing that car to get people to go else where!!

but hey, my 2 piece back window turned out great

anyways. I just wanted to say that that car was a PITA, and I am impresed by those who have to put up with multiple cars such as that.

dang we gotta get you up here for a day of training!

remember as long as it looks good and gets done thats all that matters. I personally hate letting a car leave the shop without tint, its never happened here but it will happen. Take forever if ya got to but if that car leaves with tint on it you leave with money in your pocket.

i have my first is a week so. i am sure i will feel your pain too.

I used to tint those cars sometimes 2 to 3 a day. We have a VW dealer about a mile away.It was a fvcking nightmare. I got so good at them i could to it in a hour and 15 minutes.

I bet i tinted close to 100 of them in the last 4 years.

The dealership does their own in house tinting now thank god.

They're really not all that bad if...

You 2 piece the back window, and

Remove the bottom seal from the doors, and the perimeter seal too, AND, Shrink the door windows before putting the film on.

Take an extra 10 minutes per door to do that, and you won't end up spending 8 hrs.

HGAHAHAHHAAAAAA. That's too funny that you said that. I tried to one piece it 5 times. then 2 pieced it in 30 minutes. . I removed the seal from the doors, but left on the perimeter seal, and i went through a good 14 pieces of film... . at this point, I'd been at it for about 6-7 hours and I got realllll frickin' pissed, so i went inside and got some H2O, then came back and started pullin and i ended up removing the perimeter seal. lol. finished up in 25 minutes on each window. I'm a slow poke, but hey, it getst he job done.


and yeah, Tim, I gotta get up there sometime this week. I've got old folks who are tinting like 8 windows in their dining room and they cant decide on a VLT for the life of them, so once I get that nailed down, I'm gonna have to come up.

F the new beetles...id rather go to

Look at it as a lesson learned. I once worked for a guy whose philosophy was "Ya gotta take the good with the bad". He priced ALL 2 drs the same, and all 4 drs the same. MAN I used to get pissed. We didn't have the Beetle to contend with back then, but we had 944's, T-birds, Berrettas, and mid 80's Maximas. WHY IN GODS NAME would one even consider tinting a Beetle for the same price as Camaro or Civic?? Camaro=30 - 40 minutes, Beetle= 1.5 - 2 hrs? I can do 3 camaros in the time it takes to do 1 Beetle. How is it good economics to charge the SAME for the two? This guy also did headliners. A normal headliner was around 150.00. Extra for sunroofs. One day, an older Caddy came in with a 15 or 16 piece headliner, and a sun roof. (Normally a 400.00 job) I priced it at 150.00 for him. He hit the roof!!! I told him "Hey, ya gotta take the good with the bad!"
I charge thru the nose for cars like that.($350.00 or more) I'd MUCH rather be tinting Camaros while the Competition is pulling thier hair out with Beetles

, gives me an Idea for another thread................

I'm sorry, but beetles aren't that hard....maybe 2 hours? Like modmygt said, pull the rubbers and take you're time.....

the more you do the better you will get. i give you props though for getting it done no matter how much tint you wasted. that is one of the more difficult cars and you did finish it. with that experience you should be able to finish any car out there with patience.

keep up the good work

i remember the first beetle i did took me 2 hrs on the back glass alone. after three tries i got it on in one piece. the qtrs then took another hr.

I had one of those after about four months in the auto biz. I'd already heard about them so I knew it was gonna be bad. Luckily there was a guy there who knew what he was doing to tell me to pull all of the door seals (those doors were cake). Struggled with that BG forever before two-piecing it and still had trouble. My first two piece and I'm sure that defrost line was toast after that. I'm just glad that where I'm at now we havn't had one set up for the typical time frame (and price) by our uninformed secretaries.

When I hear all of you talk like you do about beetles, it makes me wanna tint one...
It sounds like a challenge...

you could call it that. . just make sure to give yourself plenty of time, and charge for it. Then you wont get as frustrated, and I think that given those paramters, it could be a fun little car to tint. I enjoyed getting it out of my shop, stepping back pretty happy with it and mumbling some curse words towards it under my breath and then getting paid i just know for next time how to make that a fun car!