Tips and ways of getting stains out of lightly colored car seats

[hawkeye180]

I am looking for a way to get some stains out of the lightly colored seats of my Outback.

I tired one of those spray's but it just made a line around the stains.

I am thinking that warm soapy water and a little scrubbing would be best.

[subiesailor]

First off knowing how the seat is made might help you understand how to clean it. The seats are just heavy cloth slips that are tightly slipped over foam rubber pads. Any cloth cleaning type soap that will lift dirt with as little rubbing damage to the cloth as possible is going to do a decent job. A wetvac or steam cleaner type vacum is even better. I soap wash the carpets in the foot well areas in our cars every year or so and vacum it out with the wetvac keeps the car looking and smelling like new.

As for cloth part of the battle is keeping them clean to start with. Seat covers for dirty trips or projects where you know your going to mess them up goes a long way to keeping them clean. Keep in mind that very nice high end leather seating of your color and style choice only costs around $1200 or so to be installed - so killing your self and paying crazy money to keep the stock cloth seats clean does have a limit to what makes sense.

I know people who have spent thousands on very detailed - detail jobs just to keep their old cloth seat covers clean. LOL they could have had super high end very nice custom leather seating for half the amount they spent on detail jobs trying to get spots out of the cloth.

[plain OM]

I am thinking that warm soapy water and a little scrubbing would be best.

That should be enough for most marks.

I use a bit of good quality liquid dishwashing soap (in lots of water) for this, and it has worked very well so far on the cream upholstery of my 07. I use it with a clean white terry (towel) cloth that I dip in the solution, squeeze lightly , and then rub on the mark, letting the fabric surface get wetted with the light soap solution, but not soaked.