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Cleaning

This should be a quick topic. It comes up enough and I think that it warrants a quick write up. When I clean my interior pieces, I grab 2 things:

Simple Green

Castrol Super Clean

First comes the Simple Green. This stuff is awesome! You can get out just about any stain. I use the automotive stuff (It works so well I didn't even bother with the household version). I use it inside the house on carpets and everywhere. Forget Woolite Heavy Traffic Carpet Cleaner, it's got nothing on Simple Green.

Start with Simple Green and spray it on the offending area. Work it in with a stiff brush or sponge. I have found that if you use a sponge with the green scrubbie....the scrubbie can help...but leaves a green tinge to the material behind. This is cleanable later but I would suggest against using the green scrubbies. Call me racist but other colored scrubbies seem to not have this problem. One thing I found that works GREAT for working Simple Green into the stain is the scrubber doohickey that pops off the side of a jug of GoJo (another KICK ASS PRODUCT). It has nice long penetrating prongs but they are not sharp enough to cause any damage whatsoever.

Once rubbed in, if the stain is gone, you can suck away the excess with that amazing invention called TOILET PAPER. They don't tout its SUPER ABSORBENCY for nothing! Try it sometime, the stuff sucks moisture right up and out of most materials.

OK, so the stain is being a PITA. Grab the big guy....Castrol Super Clean. This guy should be diluted 50/50 with water. Its pretty strong stuff. However, most carpet and upholstery will stand up to to if for some reason you have to go full strength.

PLEASE NOTE: Using your hands to work this stuff DIRECTLY into the material with your skin is asking for a CHEMICAL BURN. The Simple Green mostly dries out my hands but the Super Clean lightly burns the outside to where they peel like a sun burn in 2 days.

Ok, on to the fun stuff....some pictures of a passenger side door panel I got off from Ebay (got the SET for $70 shipped, HAH!)

Here is the door panel. It is nearly perfect, no scratches, tears, holes, etc. The only problem is DIRT, a slight crease in the front trim of the carpet (not cracked though) and a slight curl to the front corner. This panel is a good candidate for a web review because that crease should prove that I didn't do a "switcheroo" on you.

As you can see from the following picture the corner has some HEAVY dirt...oh wait...that's not dirt! That's some !@#$!@#$ paint or glue or something! or varnish or some crap! It has hardened the carpeting almost like somebody burned it! Ok ok...lets not panic.

The Basic Order of operation went as follows:

Simple green the whole door panel. Cleaned the thing from top to bottom. Clean the dew wipes and chrome and all.

After this I usually put a coating of Meguiar's Vinyl and Rubber protector over the area above the carpet. I don't like to leave Simple Green on there too long....Simple Green could potentially lighten plastic if you use too much and left it on too long....so I like to clean out the dirt and then wipe it off and put some good quality vinyl protectant on it. That's about all there is to do with the top part. I have probably 4 pairs of door panels...and none needed any more than that amount of work for the top area to look new.

PLEASE NOTE: Armor-All or any other protectant with petro-chemicals and silicone oil in it will DESTROY your interior over time. They dissolve waxes in the rubber. Your dash pad will crack and your rubber go brittle. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
I highly recommend Meguiar and Mother's products as alternatives.

Now comes the carpet...use a liberal amount of Simple green on all areas and start working it in all over. The GoJo brush helps big time. I often put Simple Green on two or three times as I work it in. The more you use the better it seems to clean.

The Simple Green was getting out a bit of that "stain". So I switched to 50/50 Castrol Super Clean. I worked that in while USING GLOVES. I used my Toilet Paper to sop up anything there and applied some more Super Clean. Eventually the stuff started to break off the corner of the carpet and I got almost all of it out.

Extra Steps:

The panel was originally a bit...warped on that one badly stained corner. After I was finished with that corner, the cardboard had become moist and nice and pliable. I laid the door panel face down on some foam with a heave box on it and pushed some towels under the bend. After the panel dried, the door panel was pretty flat. Mounting it on an actual door should take care of the rest.
The carpet trim can be kind of a pain. It is not a smooth material but has a texture to it. Paint and grime do not like to come out of it very well with out major scrubbing....unless you get a Mr. Clean ERASER!
The next day, I cleaned the carpeting again with some Simple Green just to work about a bit more of the dirt and grime. Often after a day of sitting, another cleaning will remove the rest of the grime....and that's what happened here.

Results:

There is still a slight blemish on the outside trim. I think that has me beat. I cleaned and cleaned and even used a dab of lacquer thinner but its in there GOOD. Its not very noticeable at all but if I went and got a $5 can of light grey interior paint, I bet I could cover it easily.