Upholstry Cleaning 101

[BT91WA]

I recently cleaned the seats of my VY berlina (100,000km's), i am the second owner of the car and i suspect it was a family car.

i used an industrial strength upholstry cleaner called a HHP- i borrowed it from work. (cleaning is what i do when im not at uni)
I applied carpet dry cleaner to the fabrics and then injected and extracted heated water with the hhp. after going over every surface the seats looked absolutely mint.

The water which was extracted from the seats was a very dark brown, almost a black (no exageration) and after seeing these results i was pleased with the result but suspected there was more dirt to be got out.

Last weekend i had my workvan at my house and decided to give the seats another clean (the car is still new to me and i am still nuts about keeping it clean). I gave the front and back seats another going over and as i expected the water was still coming out dirty.

To conclude Dirt gets forced deep into the cushioning of the seats when they are used and dust is filtered through the fabrics even when the car is just sitting there, which results on alot of buildup. When the seats are cleaned top layer dirt is extracted, and the bottom layer dirt is sucked up to a higher layer to replaced the extracted dirt. I know that i will never really be able to get every spec of dirt out but if i can maintain a satisfactory level with annual cleaning.

I would recomend to all owners with fabric interiors to clean your seats atleast once a year- if you have fine red dust in your upholstry, god help you.

yep i just wrote a detailed explanation of my upholstry cleaning adventure

[2004_VZ_Acclaim]

nice write up

sounds very interesting and worthy of looking into

the HHP stuff sounds like an expensive and long process? or is that just me ...

some more info. on the product would be great

[davey g-force]

Glad it worked out for you.

Just dont use that technique on your roof lining. I've heard some horror stories of people using industrial strength cleaners on their roof lining and the adhesive breaks down, causing the lining to come away from the roof. A costly / time consuming repair excercise indeed.

Anyway, thanks for sharing...

[NEDWOB]

if you do this to vt onwards the glue that holden use will also break down and become saggie.as they are glued to the foam same as a head linning

[scottc]

what would u use to cleen the roof