Dirty cloth seats

[Cliffy]

I have a car with real dirty seats. They are cloth. I tried scrubbing them. I used a heavy soil carpet cleaning chemical. A scrub brush and a portable extractor. I was told to use the pressure washer to clean the seats, then extract the water with the extractor. Not comfortable with that idea. Just wanted to know if anyone had any comments or suggestions. What is the best way to clean heavy soil seats?

[tuscarora dave]

I've always heard the adage "Don't knock it til you've tried it" BUT, I simply can't imagine myself using a pressure washer on interior seats of a car.

I typically use a general all purpose cleaner diluted 50/50 on real dirty cloth seats. You're saying real dirty, and I have seen REAL dirty cloth seats. Do you know what sort of dirt it is? Is it actually soil from working say..a construction job, or is it grease as if a mechanic has been driving it? If it's food grease, as if a short order cook has been driving home in his work uniform...you may want to consider some seat covers because that stuff is near impossible to remove. Mechanic's grease comes out rather easily with a good degreaser and plain soil will typically come out with a 10 to 1 dilution of water to APC.

Spray your cleaner directly on the soiled fabric and scrub it in with a soft brush and then extract it 2 or 3 times. Do you have an extractor with a solution pump or will you be using a shop vac? If you'll just be using a shop vac, it needs to be a powerful one and I suggest that you first extract the dirt and cleaner mixture out of the fabric the best you can before going back with a spray bottle of water to re wet the fabric and extract it X2 or maybe X3. If your cloth seats are still dirty you may have to repeat the process a few more times to get them fully clean.

Treat it to a nice test section...do all the steps in one small work section to see what it's going to take to get it cleaned up nicely, then once you have the product/process dialed in, repeat that same process on the rest of the interior.

[vegas911gts]

I use the rug doctor hand attachement for my beater car with fabric seats.