How to clean seats.

[dahodges]

My new festiva has really dirty heavily stained vinyl seats. My 12 year old daughter said "they looked like something gave birth on them, like maybe a dog or something"

Whats the strongest stuff I can use to clean them with. Has anyone used straight bleach to clean their seats?

Thanks
David

[SimonTuffGuy]

I've heard of something like this... Pull them out of the car, use some Simple Green and a power washer, then let them sit out in the sun to dry...

[dahodges]

Thanks I've used the Simple Green and a scrub brush. It helped but there still a dark gray.

David

[David88]

Like Simon says...... I had good results with this method. Its likely the foam is just as dirty under the seat cover fabric. Wetting and scrubing just brings up the dirt from underneath. They need a deep cleaning.
Use a good stain removing laundry detergent like Era. I put it in an empty spray bottle and mixed with Oxy Clean and the hottest water possible from the tap. I soaked the seats well with the mixture. Then I hosed them off with the garden hose with a jet spray head. Next I vacuumed well with a good wet/dry shop vac. The I filled the empty again spray bottle with clear rinse water. I worked in small areas rinsing the seats by vacuuming again.This time spraying rinse water right in front of the vacuum nozzle as I'm moving along, Lifting the fabric away from the foam where possible and sucking the water out as much as possible right away not letting it soak in this time. Then let sun dry. (summertime, oh how I miss it)
P.S. If you used bleach, go easy and only if you use in overall cleaning.

[Pocket_Rocket]

When I got my car detailing course, we learned to clean stains on seats by using a brush (like a shoe or nail brush) wrapped in a cotton cloth, and then spray some Bio-Sol (biologic solvent, biodegradable, safe for the environment) and rub the stain in a scraping motion, kinda like you would do when you're scooping ice cream, and when the stains were mostly gone, we used a carpet cleaning vac (with that hot water/soap nozzle at the end of the hose) and it worked really good. I even return some Corolla seats to their original color, which has been stained by hash smoke by the owner (we must have picked about 100$ worth of hash bits with the shop vac loll), thing is, that biologic solvent was a generic brand; all the products we used were made by a well known manufacturer for Toyota, hence the Toyota label that were on them. I've since tried to find out how makes this product, but with no success... I guess I'll have to pay my Toyota dealer a visit a try to get them to sell me a bottle of that... And while I'm there, might as well buy one of their penetrating fluid; best stuff I've ever seen to this day, never had a bolt or nut that wouldn't come out with this stuff!!!

[Pocket_Rocket]

By the way, from what I learned, if you put the cleaning product on the stain, you're gonna disolve it and make it spread on the fabric and into the seat's foam... The method I've described in my other post is called the "stain transfer"; the solvent on the cotton cloth will gradually disolve the stain and transfer it from the seat to the cloth, that's also why you have to use a light scrubbing motion instead of random scrubbing and avoid putting a lot of pressure on the brush, otherwise it'll spread the stain in the seat anyways...

[jglutz]

I've heard of something like this... Pull them out of the car, use some Simple Green and a power washer, then let them sit out in the sun to dry...

I've done this...I don't know about apressure washer...i'd be scared it damge the fabric...I just used a garden hose. Rinse...Rinse...Rinse...Rinse....Left over soap will still show the stain and attract more dirt. I use a product called Purple Power...Made by Castrol...Sold at Wal-Mart in the Auto Section.

The Seats come out with 8 Bolts total... While they're out take the carpet out...less than five minutes..,spray it....scrub it...hang it up...take the garden hose to it.

[elcamino1]

Go to the dollar store and get yourself some Awesome $1 and a good scrub brush then go to work.
Also seat are made to last a long time I have pressure washed seats I've pulled from JY won't hurt them.

[Kraig]

The white "Goop" brand hand cleaner will clean almost anything!! I cleaned the cloth seats on my daughter's car with it and they went from horrid to clean. Plus it's cheap!!

[freshtiva]

I used some stuff called Blue Coral once that seemed to work real good.

[dahodges]

Thanks eveybody for the tips.

David