Auto detailing...

[Flexin]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

What should us desert folk use then? Cleaning is not a strong point of mine. My car is really gross, so i either spend the money and get someone else to do it while i wait like an hour, depending on the wait, or i clean in myself (which i need to suck it up and do).

Does your car look like this?

James

[Flexin]

If you car is really dirty you can rent a carpet extractor, just make sure they have a small handle. The long ones to do your home carpets are too long for a car. Or you can just clean the rest of your car yourself and get a shop to extract it for you.

An extractor can make doing a car interior so much easier.

James

[Tsunami]

Originally Posted by Flexin

Does your car look like this?

James

Ok, i guess gross is subjective. My car doesn't look that bad! Theres no stains, just a lot of pug fur and dust from being in the desert.

[racedoll]

Originally Posted by Flexin

An extractor can make doing a car interior so much easier.

I've never heard it called an extractor, but I was going to suggest a carpet cleaner (same thing) with the upholstery attachment since it is smaller.
They work really nice on the couch and chair, don't see why you couldn't use them on your car.

We have some glass cleaner/wax stuff for the windows. It does a really nice job but you have to be patient because you have to apply similar to wax on the exterior. Just time consuming.

Originally Posted by Tsunami

Ok, i guess gross is subjective. My car doesn't look that bad! Theres no stains, just a lot of pug fur and dust from being in the desert.

That is like my car - full of dog hair from Max!

[Flexin]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

Ok, i guess gross is subjective. My car doesn't look that bad! Theres no stains, just a lot of pug fur and dust from being in the desert.

It is very subjective. We had someone drop off a van and as it was pretty dirty but wasn't real bad. I used a large rubber maid garbage can and one office garbage can to clean out garbage just so I could start to vacuum. We had other that we were told that were not dirty and they were just nasty.

Then we had a woman give us a car and called an hour later. She sounded embarrassed on the phone. She felt bad for giving us such a dirty car. This car could be washed, wipe your hand across the dash once, and then pull out the floor mats, shake the and then put them back in the car. After this you would have a car that was cleaner then 90% of most use cars. But to her this was nasty. I wish all the cars we got looked like that.

Dog hair can be a pain. VW Jetta's and Golfs were a bitch. The hair would dig into the seats and carpets and they won't let go.

We used a small hand held brush that looked like the sweepa for removing dog hair. It works well on most cars.

We did one Jetta that took over 4 hours to vacuum the dog hair.

James

[Flexin]

Originally Posted by racedoll

I've never heard it called an extractor, but I was going to suggest a carpet cleaner (same thing) with the upholstery attachment since it is smaller.
They work really nice on the couch and chair, don't see why you couldn't use them on your car.

We have some glass cleaner/wax stuff for the windows. It does a really nice job but you have to be patient because you have to apply similar to wax on the exterior. Just time consuming.



That is like my car - full of dog hair from Max!

They are basically the same. They just call them carpet extractors when designed for car detailing. And your right a carpet cleaner with upholstery attachment will work nice.

You should see some of the water that comes out of them. One day we did three smoking cars in a row. The nasty water that came out of that machine was sick. The other businesses around us closed their doors because of the smell.

James

[Flexin]

This is what I used most of the time for pet hair.

James

[shmike]

Originally Posted by Flexin

Does your car look like this?

James

James,

That is amazing!

My truck looks nothing like that first pic but if it weren't for the hole in the driver's seat, I'd swear that was a different car.

I'm assuming you used the extractor on the seats and carpet. What did you use on the vinyl and plastic bits?

Excellent job!

[Flexin]

BTW if you don't have a extractor you can clean dirty floor mats by spraying the with carpet cleaner, scrubbing the with a brush, then hanging them on a wall spraying them with a hose. By hanging them it allows the dirt to fall out of them. I used to do this for really bad mats before extracting them. If you do this leave them hanging to get the water to drip off of them. This will allow them to dry faster.

James

[Flexin]

Originally Posted by shmike

James,

That is amazing!

My truck looks nothing like that first pic but if it weren't for the hole in the driver's seat, I'd swear that was a different car.

I'm assuming you used the extractor on the seats and carpet. What did you use on the vinyl and plastic bits?

Excellent job!

Thanks. I looked at it and said wait thats not the right after pic it has a hole in the seat. I had to look at the first pic again to find the hole in that pile of dirt stains.

On that Saturn Vue we would have sprayed the seats and carpet with a degreaser and scrubed the hell out of them with a carpet brush. Then we cursed and scrubbed again. Next we extracted the seats and carpet. Let the dry a bit and realize that the damn this still has some stains so we would re scrub those spots and extract them again.

The vinyl and plastic was cleaned with a degreaser mixed 5-1 and a microfiber. Then we used a water base interior dressing called Apeal that was made by Malco. That was mixed at 5-1 as well. It had a bit of a banana smell. It didn't leave the dash greasy or shiny. It made the dash look like it did when it was new.

James