Super weekend cleanup ... ... January 14, 2007
While my 99 Formula was a steal, it did have a couple drawbacks. The prior owner obviously did not care too much for interior clean up and maintenance, and it showed. If you had glanced at the interior alone, you wouldn't have guessed the car had 27,000 miles on it by the way it looked, and smelled. The prior owner was a big smoker, and while the interior didn't smell like smoke, it had a pungent musty smell to it that was rather unflattering. There were also many stains on the carpet from where he carelessly spilled drinks, but didn't care to clean it up. To be honest it kind of made me sick that someone could trash (what was) a nice car like that.
The interior was so gross that often when I finished driving the car I felt a strange urge to go wash my hands. The smell also put me on the verge of a headache if I had the windows closed. I am not one for car air fresheners though, as I think the fake 'strawberry' and 'vanilla' scents are often more offending than the original stank. One sunny, 70 degree weekend in January, I decided to overhaul the interior.
A few months ago, I purchased a Bissell Pro-heat 2x carpet cleaner to use in my house. Not to get too domestic here - but this thing plainly kicks ass. It lifted stains like crazy, and also has a wonderful handheld attachment. I couldn't wait to try it out on my car, but had to wait for a warm weekend so I could air-dry it.
I started by removing everything that I could from the interior - floor mats, personal belongings, and seats. What I found underneath the rear seats made me want to vomit. Someone had spilled a large amount of coca cola on each side. As if the coke stain wasn't bad enough, there was change that had actually BECOME PART OF THE CARPET because of it. I also found a couple empty packs of cigarettes, lighters, French fries, peanut shells, and get this - even some lead sinkers for fishing.
After removing everything, gagging, then throwing away trash, I fully vacuumed the interior to remove any other smaller bits. I then sprayed the entire carpet and seat areas with some heavy duty carpet pre-treater, and let it soak in for about 20 minutes.
This is (the better of the two sides) after removing the stuck change with pliers....
As you can see the stain continues on to the floor. After allowing the carpet to soak for a while, I busted out my kick ass carpet cleaner, and got busy. It was a very long process, as the handheld piece is only about 4 inches wide. Furthermore I had to go over and over and over these horrible stains to loosen them up.
I removed almost 3 gallons of nasty with my carpet cleaner, that looked like this:
Gross, huh? The pre-treater, soap, and obviously the water I used were all clear...so the color you see is the nastiness that was coming out of the carpet and seats themselves. The cleaning was endless. Every time I turned around I noticed something else that needed attention. It took me the entire day to tackle this.
Finally I started to make head way. Here is the carpet afterwards:
A little better, huh? Now both sides are clean, as well as the seat back:
I reinstalled the seat bottoms after the carpet was completely dry. I also had quite a time cleaning the front seats and carpet. While not as disgusting as the back, they still had their fair share of stains and tar smell. Afterwards though, the result was impressive.
Another big part of my project was cleaning the hard plastic. Many of the knobs and buttons were brown, where disgusting fingers had operated them one too many times. With a rag and some windex, I painstakingly cleaned each one to restore it to factory color.
Overall I was very pleased with my transformation. Now, the car smells like....nothing! That's right. No must, no smoke, no cover-up air fresheners. It smells wonderfully clean and fresh...and I don't feel like washing my hands anymore after driving.