I can’t get rid of the the stains!
November 20th, 2007 by Danny the web stig
A lot of people, including professional valeters have been having problems with seats drying with stains after cleaning them, these stains are best described as water marks and appear as rings. It usually more obvious on light grey or beige coloured seat fabrics and BMW, Mercedes, VW and Ford are particularly prone to it although they aren’t the only ones.
A typical example would be where a drink would get spilt on a seat, even something like bottled mineral water, and it would leave a ring. Any attempt to shampoo out the water mark would look fine until the seat drys, when more rings would appear from the cleaning.
In 99.5% of cases, this is because as the water dries from the seat, it lifts up dirt from within the seat to the surface — every time you try to remove the water stains, you are just re-wetting the fabric and drawing more dirt up from inside the sponge filling. In a tiny percentage of cases there is a worse problem — the foam inside the seats contain a blue dye which is not colour-fast! So if you have blue water marks, on beige upholstery, on a German made car, I’m afraid you are going to have real problems!
There are two solutions to this problem. We have found that if you dry the car fast with a blower, the surface dries first and therefore does not draw the dirt up — unfortunately, this solution is a bit hit and miss even if you have an industrial air mover. Using a hair dryer doesn’t have the same effect because to avoid patchiness, you need to clean the whole seat panel, and it is very hard to dry a whole seat in this way, but you can try. Towel drying the seat will also help a great deal.
We have found that the stains seem to be worse if you clean the upholstery on a really hot dry day, which would seem to contradict what we know about drying the seats with a hot air blower, but try cleaning the seats when it gets cooler.
A better way is to clean the seats without letting them get wet deep down — in other words, just cleaning the surface. Unfortunately, dry cleaning fluid doesn’t seem to avoid the problem, and dry-granuals, even if they were cheap and easily available don’t remove the water stains very well. The best method is to mist on a foam cleaners and wipe off straight away with a microfibre cloth. Unfortunately, the foam cleaners are mixed for safety, making them rather weak and not aggressive enough for a really good clean, so it’s best to first mist over with a general purpose cleaner. A steam cleaner and microfibre cloth works even better if you can get one, they can be hired rather cheaply. However, these methods are not guaranteed to work first time, you will have to clean the seat, let it dry, and if stains are still there, try again. It is possible to remove them, but it can be hard work.
There is just one thing more to say, and that is that foam cleaners usually contain brighteners, so if using spray on foam, make sure to use an even coat over the whole of the seat or you could end up with a patch finish… but this isn’t the end of the world and it can be solved by another application of the foam.
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