2008 Ford Escape Cloth Seats Problem

[Metallman56]

Hey guys,

my wife and I bought a 08 Escape this spring. love the car but I`ve got an issue with it. I cannot for the life of my clean the seats. they were a little dirty when I got it, but nothing extreme.

things I`ve tried

Turtle Wax carpet cleaner
Blue Magic Carpet cleaner (has worked great for me in the past)
Steam Cleaner (borrowed from my buddy didn`t work even a tiny bit)
Oxy Clean in water that was so hot I about couldn`t stand.

the Oxy Clean worked, but now every time the seats get wet the seat looks awful again

here are a couple of pics I took this weekend. take a look and let me know what you guys think. for the first time I`m actually at a loss for car cleaning.






also I`m on a really tight budget right now saving up to move next year, so hopefully what I need isn`t something I need to buy. I`m basically hoping for someone to know something I don`t that doesn`t really cost me anything lol

thanks guys

[Stokdgs]

Congrats on a nice car !

Not sure of the products you used since I have not ever used them, but perhaps you did not get all the soap and the dirt it is carrying rinsed out and extracted from the cloth and the foam underneath it..

I have a really good Steamer VX5000, and know how good it can clean most things, but even with that, there has to be a way to remove, vacuum, extract, blot out, all the dirt that is carried in the soap that is embedded in the cloth...

Did you wash, scrub, brush, etc., rinse until all the soap was gone, and then extract this from the seats? Did you really press down hard to get as much out as possible over every square inch?

In my shop, I only use Meguiars DD103 APC+ diluted 10:1 or so, and this takes care of probably 95% for me just fine.. This product is very low foaming, cleans really well, rinses out very easily, and has never left an outline or ring around any place I have used it, including Headliners...

Good luck - I think you still have soap mixture there that needs to be rinsed out and extracted completely from the cloth and foam underneath..
DanF

[Ronkh]

I think the problem is that the stains are leeching back up from the foam when it gets wet.

Not sure really how to correct it. Hopefully someone else will chime in and help

[mrclean81]

The trick is to clean the surface without getting the foam underneath wet. A can of dry foam such as Tuff Stuff or Blue Coral DRI Clean and some scrubbing with clean microfiber should do the trick. This is how I do it..
http://www.autopiaforums.com/forums/...ording-me.html

[Metallman56]

thanks mrclean81 that looks really promising. i`ll try it in the next few weeks and see happens.

[mrclean81]

No problem. Good luck with it