Seat and carpet cleaning with a garden hose.
07-01-2017, 11:25 PM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 2,979
Seat and carpet cleaning with a garden hose.
Consider washing polyesters in the washing machine. Soak in laundry detergent and water, spin dry, followed by two rinse and spin cycles.
The seats and rugs of our cars can be made much cleaner and smell nicer without spending 50 cents.
I'm currenty working on a 2003 Toyota Corolla.
It's interior was maintained by the prior owner fairly well, but there was still 14 years of yuck film on the seats and the rug.
I used a wrench to remove the seats.
Then I put about 4 gallons of water in a pail.
Added some liquid laundry soap. Then I tossed in some dish scrubbers.
I got my wet or dry shop vac ready.
Then I sprayed my rugs with a garden hose.
Till the carpet was nice and wet.
Then I slopped on the detergent solution.
I worked that in like one would shampoo.
Then I sucked the water up with the shop vac.
Then I hosed and vaccuumed twice more, to suck out most of the detergent mix.
I will be doing the same things with the car seats.
The car will be parked in the sun all day long while the moon roof is tilted up and the windows rolled down a bit. It takes a couple of days for things to dry out.
Ideally one would do this during a heat wave.
I did this proceedure on the Maxima a couple of years ago. The seats and rugs looked almost like new.
I suspect that the used car dealerships and the detail shops might use a similar proceedure.
Things get wet both ways.
The seats and rugs of our cars can be made much cleaner and smell nicer without spending 50 cents.
I'm currenty working on a 2003 Toyota Corolla.
It's interior was maintained by the prior owner fairly well, but there was still 14 years of yuck film on the seats and the rug.
I used a wrench to remove the seats.
Then I put about 4 gallons of water in a pail.
Added some liquid laundry soap. Then I tossed in some dish scrubbers.
I got my wet or dry shop vac ready.
Then I sprayed my rugs with a garden hose.
Till the carpet was nice and wet.
Then I slopped on the detergent solution.
I worked that in like one would shampoo.
Then I sucked the water up with the shop vac.
Then I hosed and vaccuumed twice more, to suck out most of the detergent mix.
I will be doing the same things with the car seats.
The car will be parked in the sun all day long while the moon roof is tilted up and the windows rolled down a bit. It takes a couple of days for things to dry out.
Ideally one would do this during a heat wave.
I did this proceedure on the Maxima a couple of years ago. The seats and rugs looked almost like new.
I suspect that the used car dealerships and the detail shops might use a similar proceedure.
Things get wet both ways.
07-02-2017, 12:20 AM
#2
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Central AR
Posts: 3,041
Many many years ago, I worked after school for a large dealer that would "recondition" cars to bring up their condition rating from poor/fair to clean.
They used a high pressure detergent washing and suction process on carpet and upholstery. It was somewhat like a giant rug doctor upholstery cleaning machine.
After the car's interior had been washed, they had a big hot air drying furnace room where they would park the car for 4 hours with hoses like the ones in the picture stuffed inside the windows to dry out the interior. The dryer would circulate hot air through the interior of the car and dry it regardless of the outside weather conditions.
They used a high pressure detergent washing and suction process on carpet and upholstery. It was somewhat like a giant rug doctor upholstery cleaning machine.
After the car's interior had been washed, they had a big hot air drying furnace room where they would park the car for 4 hours with hoses like the ones in the picture stuffed inside the windows to dry out the interior. The dryer would circulate hot air through the interior of the car and dry it regardless of the outside weather conditions.