Car Carpet Cleaning

To view article Click Here

There is no interior surface in an automobile that is forced to stand up to such intense and constant abuse as the carpet. People who are fussy about the carpet at home will enter and exit an automobile without a thought for what their feet are tracking in, and then grind mystery grit and goo into the car’s carpet.

There are two different cleaning methods you will need to consider. Neither of which is daunting to a detailer, but the second, and most thorough, may seem downright overwhelming if you’ve never done it before (and you probably haven’t).

Shampooing the Car’s Carpet
Make certain you use a heavy-duty carpet shampoo. The carpet in your car is rugged stuff. And all the grime, mud, sand, road salt, and oil, the sticky gross things that your shoes deliver straight to its surface, accumulate in the fibers and settle down to the rubber matting.

That carpet is tough, but the unseemly substances your shoes have ground into it are tough to remove, so you’ll need a product with cleaning chemicals as tough as the carpet is designed to withstand. There are carpet cleaners and shampoos designed to do the job in your car. Try these products rather than ones by the same companies but designed for the home.

Going Beyond Shampoo Clean
There is an even more effective cleaning technique for automobile carpet. Take the carpet completely out of the car and clean it. No, not just the floor mats, which you should remove and clean separately whenever you shampoo the carpet.

Remove the entire carpet. The job is either easier than you might think or every bit the hassle you can envision. To get the carpet out, you’ll have to unbolt the seats and remove them. There are four bolts beneath each of the front seats. Yes, even power seats can be removed. Beneath each power seat you’ll find a plug.

Unplug it. And remove the seat belts. Once you get the carpet out of the car, hang it over a fence, or better still, a small swing set, the kind with a frame shaped like the letter A.

Follow the directions on the cleaning product you choose, and then take a water hose with a nozzle you can adjust to a firm spray, and hose it down. This may seem harsh or damaging, but remember, automobile carpet is tough, tough stuff. It has to be.

Hanging the carpet over an A-framed swing set helps promote drying. The carpet will dry pretty quickly; if cleaned in the morning in the garage, by late afternoon it will be dry. If you notice that the lower edges of the carpet are slow to dry, use an air hose or a blow dryer.