I have been puttering with the wife's "new" 04 Town Car that we brought home last week. (there are pics under the general discussion tab in a thread called "Looking at a Mercedes Wagon," needless to say we ended up with the Town Car after the head gaskets went in the 98 DeVille. So the Town Car is fresh out of the original owner's garage, an older lady. It is really in pristine shape. The front bumper has some rub spots from the garage so we are having it resprayed next week. The driver's floor mat also had some spots on it, so I decided to see what I could do to improve since the rest of the interior is showroom. We have one of those carpet cleaning machines with the handheld upholstery tool. I tried that first and was disappointed when it really made no difference. We have a small bottle of Woolite in the laundry room, so I decided to mix up a shot of that in a bucket of warm water. Woolite is known for being gentle so I figured it would not discolor the mat. Grabbed a scrub brush and went for it. Spots came out with a bit of elbow grease. After scrubbing I used the rinse function on our carpet cleaner to get the soap residue out. You could probably use a spray bottle with plain water to rinse. If you don't have a carpet cleaner, you could remove the excess moisture by using a wet dry vac. Following this I left them out in the sun for a couple of hours to finish drying out. Everything looks as good as new. Give it a shot if you've got some spots that are bugging you.
Thanks. My later model Dodge truck had the heater core break while visiting in Illinois this July. Bypassed the hoses and only used paper towels to clean up the mess. Lot of paper towels! Heard this is normal for this brand of vehicle. My old cars still have the original heater cores made in USA. Hear rumors it would be over $800 to have a new core installed. An $80 part but the dash and most of the truck needs to be unassembled. All except the tail pipes I think !!!!!! After it is done I will try the Woolit. It's on my wife's, passenger side, with a floor mat so I can't see it. It does mess up the AC. Now it gets super cold and defrost does not work. Who'd a thunk? :confused:
Heh, I'll have to try this on the carpet in my '89 parts car, it's got a few coffee stains. I'm too cheap for new carpet when I've got way nicer carpet in my parts car that I can clean up. Thanks for the tip, I'll try that, though I doubt it could save the carpet already in my car. I'm kind of worried the carpet in my car might come alive and attack me when I try to remove it. Also, my grandmother uses Goop to remove stains from clothing, may work on cars too, could give that a try.
If you have any really stubborn stains, you might want to try pre-treating the spots with some of the pre-treatment products like Shout that are used for laundry. You could spray the spots, let them sit for awhile, do an initial scrub/rinse and then move on to Woolite for round two. I would just advise anyone to be careful not to mix too many different chemicals on the carpet at once because that could ending up bleaching out the color. I have some coffee stains from the previous owner on the passenger side in my Escalade. The spots are under the factory floor mat, so the stain is not normally visible but I get pissed everytime I vacuum out the truck and see it just lurking there. I had tried OxyClean on that after buying the truck a few years ago without much success. Planning to try the Woolite soon. Happy cleaning!!
Coffee stains can be a bugger as well as soda pop mainly because of the sugar, it can come leaching out a few days later if you have not got it all out. A vinegar and water mix also works good for pre-treating, don't flood the area but just scrub a bit in, let it sit and as I do shop vac out. I also have used Woolite several times with good results with the exception of a tan interior where it did nothing, I ended up using Simple Green. But as mentioned, TEST a area that won't be seen, like under the seat etc to make sure you won't hurt the colour. While cleaning I also have had 2x great results re-dying faded areas, the carpet in my Olds (blue), and the seats and carpet in my old Fox body Merc (rark red) by mixing in RIT fabric dye to as hot as you hand can handle water. You can get it at Wall Mart and Michels craft store. Again, be care full as it could stain other plastics etc but in both my cases I had no problems. I never flooded the interior but in the soap bucket whipped up a frothy foam and scrubbed the foam with just a bit of water then shop vaced out. Some faded parts such as my red head rests in the Merc required doing this a few times over. As for the Merc, the interior sun fade left it looking like a 5 out of 10 and I got it back to a strong 9 out of 10, ditto with the carpet in the Olds. Keep in mind, dyeing a carpet or your cloth seats is not like dyeing vinyl. Fabric have Dye sites and with age and wear they get weaker..... My kid could explain this better but in short, you may never see %100 again, just a major improvement. Fabrics fade, even where the sun does not reach it. My kid dyed my headlinr I put in my Olds a few years ago and it still looks great yet when I lower the visors, you can see it's faded a bit. Then there is my dog carpets in the back, I go all out cleaning those... Pressure wash a clean spot in the drive way, blast rubber back rug, dump some .... and scrub in with a good stiff broom... Blast again with pressure washer and hang on fence to dry:2_thumbs_up_-_anima Then you have to not only keep up on vacuuming/cleaning the entire car especially if you haul pets and we all know how a wet dog can stink up a car fast! with the regular vacuuming I seem to do I sprinkle plain jane regular uncented... NOT the pet stuff either, but the regular as it does not leave that old lady covered a gallon of cheap perfume smell. Sprinkle it on, let it sit for awhile and vacuum out. WARNING, Once I bout a box by mistake that was scented, not only did it smell like the little old lady but it left millions of small white particles in the carpet that were a B**** to vacuum out.
I'm pretty sure that the faint smell of wet dog would be more tolerable than what my car smells like, which is grease, rarely moved car musk, more grease, automotive foulness that has wound up in the car from hauling rather crusty parts, and mildew where virtually all of my windows leak if it rains hard enough. Basically my car smells like something that's been sitting in the junkyard full of greasy parts for about twenty years, which is why every last scrap of interior, even the under carpet padding is going out the doors, windows, and wherever else i can throw it when I swap in the interior from the '89.
