Mold-like stains on plastic around dash air vents

[Mike Phillips]

Just to clarify for anyone reading this into the future... note the portions I turned bold and red

Because you've already tried a number of things that I too would have tried with no or ZERO effect - this leads me to believe the surface has undergone a physical change where the material has been physically altered.

By this I mean, the surface material has been stained via the mold and it's physically altered it's appearance or pigment.

Sincere Thanks for mailing the product samples.

Unfortunately, I think you were correct earlier, these are overspray stains and not mold.

Yeah - I never said they were OVERSPRAY stains. To me, when the word "overspray" is used, most people think of some type of PAINT overspray. That's not what I wrote and never what I meant.


What I said was I think the MOLD or MILDEW, (whatever it is that is causing the "spots" on your Corvette's dash), are STAINS CAUSED by the MOLD or MILDEW.


We see this in boats. Sometimes the mold or mildew, if not addressed soon enough, will not only GROW on a vinyl surface but will permanently ALTER the material and permanently STAIN the material. The resulting discoloration is IN the vinyl not just on the vinyl and nothing you wipe onto it will under the discoloring of the material. And this is also what I said in one of my posts,

Because you've already tried a number of things that I too would have tried with no or ZERO effect - this leads me to believe the surface has undergone a physical change where the material has been physically altered.

By this I mean, the surface material has been stained via the mold and it's physically altered it's appearance or pigment.

At this point I'd say the last hope would be to try a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that's my initial thoughts....

And because a picture tells a thousand words - here's the picture showing the stain spots on the dash of the Corvette.




Just wanted to clarify.

[WillSports3]

i'm also wondering if it could be that whatever it is has stained the pores of the plastic, in which case perhaps a hair dryer to warm it up and open up the pores and then a cleaner of choice would work.

[Mike Hoekstra]

To clarify, I chimed in on this thread Mike Phillips. I said that they looked very much like product overspray in my experience so that’s where that came from. Depending on the product being an aerosol or lotion the propellant or suntan lotion for example will react. It very much looks like a WD40 stain which I have seen before when it comes in contat with plastic.


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[Mike Phillips]

To clarify, I chimed in on this thread Mike Phillips. I said that they looked very much like product overspray in my experience so that’s where that came from. Depending on the product being an aerosol or lotion the propellant or suntan lotion for example will react. It very much looks like a WD40 stain which I have seen before when it comes in contact with plastic.

Gotcha. Thanks for clarify. It's hard for me to always re-read an entire thread. Heck I'm still going through new questions directed at me in this forum group since last Friday and then typing out answers.


The way I read the thread starter's post is that he though I said it was overspray and I just wanted to make sure no took that away from the thread.