[Spells]

Wondering who has found an effective cleaning solution for the 2010+ light cloth seats? I got water stains from a leak from distilled water. :28:

Wondering if there is an effective cleaning solution that anybody has field tested. Armor-All's cloth seat cleaner was not effective.

 

[Saint J VT]

I have the same question.

I think, to do a thorough job, I will need to pull the two front seats out on a nice, dry, sunny day. My wife was leaving the windows open a bit when the car was in the garage, and the garage is part of my barn, with wooden plank boards for the floor. In high winds, dirt gets whipping around in there and we were suddenly wondering what all this black stuff is kind of ground-in to the Ivory/Tan light-color cloth!

I told her about how I have to close all the garage doors and barn doors in the high winds as the dirt was blowing everywhere. So, now she puts all the windows up, but we still need to clean the interior.

I do have a Steam Machine and Vacuum, however it does not work as well as I thought it would when I bought the thing for over a thousand dollars about five years ago.

 

[Subyblue]

I use armor-all oxy magic. seems to do the job for me.

 

[plain OM]

The effectiveness of various methods probably depends, in part, on the fabric and the source of the stains. I had rainwater get on my driver seat leaving an obvious line across the seat. See: http://www.subaruoutback.org/forums/64-detailing/47011-water-rain-stain-seat-ideas-remove.html

 

[subiesailor]

Very gental non harsh soap on the soft fabrics like the seats - dove dish soap was a favorite of one of the old school detail guys in the shop at a dealer I worked at.

He used Dove - got a good foam going and would take a damp rag then scoop some foam off the top of the bucket and dab the dirty areas of the seats. This was the trick if getting the car back fast without wet seats was a big deal. IE not a lot of time to dry the seat etc. After dabbing the seat with a good amount of foam lifting oil and dirt out of the cloth he would hit the seat with your standard old shop vac. This generally worked really well for your basic dirt etc.

He would also do the same general thing with the carpet only using a fairly wet rag lots of foam and lift as much dirt out of the carpets as he could with dabbing motion not scrubbing. Then again hit the floors with a shop vac which did a good job of drying the carpet and lifting anything else out.

This is pretty much how I have cleaned my cars since and I learned that way back in the early 90's. That guy never did have a single complaint from anyone and the owner of the dealership treated him like a GOD. He for sure pulled some major wins turning absolutely retched cars back into clean respectable rides.