Review: P&S XPRESS Interior Cleaner and Shape Up Dressing - 1963 Plymouth Fury Muscle Car!

[Mike Phillips]

Review: P&S XPRESS Interior Cleaner and Shape Up Dressing - 1963 Plymouth Fury Muscle Car!



P&S XPRESS Interior Cleaner and Shape Up Dressing






P&S Xpress Interior Cleaner


What is it?
An all-purpose cleaner for cleaning the interior of cars, trucks and suvs.


What does it do?

Safely cleans leather, vinyl and plastic surfaces


When do I use it?

Anytime you need to remove a stain and/or odor from inside your car, truck or suv.


Why should I use it?

To clean and remove multiple types of stains, dirt and from for the interior of your car..



From the manufacturer

Xpress Interior Cleaner

Perfect for cleaning all surfaces of the interior of vehicles without the risk of damage.

XPRESS Interior Cleaner was developed for use on leather, vinyl and plastic. This incredible product cleans without drying, discoloring or damaging the cleaning surface. Cleaned surfaces will feel clean and residue free.

Designed for express applications, XPRESS Interior Cleaner cleans dirt, grease, oil and other interior traffic marks that accumulate through normal use.




Shape Up Dressing


What is it?
A water-based dressing for automotive interiors.


What does it do?

Protects and beautifies leather, vinyl and plastic surfaces


When do I use it?

Use on new car interiors and exteriors in great condition or on older cars after first pre-cleaning surfaces with P&S XPRESS Interior Cleaner.


Why should I use it?

To maintain a show room new appearance inside or outside of your cars, trucks or suvs.



From the manufacturer

Shape Up Dressing

Conditions, softens, preserves and protects all leather, vinyl or rubber surfaces.

Shape Up is a high quality, water based silicone dressing that may be used for all dressing applications. Shape Up leaves a beautiful natural shine on both the interior and exterior.

The best in vinyl dressings and preservatives also includes a bonus, a pleasant, lemony scent, so the vehicle can be dressed and deodorized in one easy step.




My comments

P&S Detailing Products have been around since 1961 and this year, the founder, William R. Phillips was inducted into the IDA Hall of Fame (posthumously — award accepted by sons Bob and Dave).

The brand has a stellar reputation for quality product for both enthusiasts detailers and professionals alike.

I had recently used the XPRESS Interior Cleaner on a car we used for a TV shoot and was impressed by it's cleaning ability and also it's fresh scent. Many all-purpose-cleaners clean well, but smell horrible. I knew I had this review coming up so I had the confidence to use it AND take before and after pictures knowing I was going to get great results.




Recent Exterior Detail

I recently did an exterior detail to this old 2-door Plymouth. The interior was in worse condition than the outside. I couldn't let her leave without making the inside look as good as the outside so I used this car to use the P&S XPRESS Interior Cleaner and the Shape Up dressing.







1963 Plymouth Fury Interior Detail

So she looks god on the outside, let's check out the inside....


Here's a good example of how the entire interior looks....






Because this car has a medium to light tan colored interior - a tape-line is going to help my camera to capture before and after results.





First step will be to clean, for this I'm going to also demonstrate 3 different tool options,

1. The human hand with a brush
2. The Mighty Mini with a brush
3. The FLEX cordless PE14 with a brush

Here's the Voodoo Juice....






Mat & Carpet Scrub Brush

Here's the typical brush we've all seen and used all our lives.... and "yes" they do work well and "yes" we do carry these at Autogeek.com






First I'll spray the entire inner half of the door down including the fabric.






Somehow missed the magic "spray exiting the nozzle action shot"






Missed the spray shot here too....






Basic stuff - scrub, scrub scrub....











Mighty Mini Cordless Polisher

This is a cordless mini spot repair polisher, at least that's how it was originally introduced to the AG store, when I first saw it my mind immediately thought,

Cool. Now I can machine scrub tires without getting shocked.

I slapped a Cyclo Tools brush onto the Mighty Mini and then did use it to machine scrub tires and wrote an article about it here.

Review: Machine Tire Scrubber by Mike Phillips - NO SHOCK HAZARD WHILE WASHING YOUR CAR!



And of course, you can use the same Cyclo Tools brushes to machine scrub leather, vinyl and plastic interior surfaces and it does a much better job than working by hand. There are 4 different brushes available that will fit this tool, you can see them here

Cyclo Brushes






And it does work great for machine scrubbing, plastic, vinyl, leather and even carpet and upholstery.










FLEX Cordless PE14

Now this is a REALLY cool tool for machine scrubbing interiors and also tires. And it won't shut off until you release the speed trigger or run the batter down and the battery will run 40 minutes no problem.










After cleaning the inside of the door panel and upholstery and at the same time showing you three options for doing the mechanical side of the work, I wiped the door panel using a Cobra Glass Towel. I like the towels for wiping interiors because unlike fluffy towels, they are a tick more stout and I like that in a towel for wiping away gunk off surfaces like you see in these pictures. PLUS for a guy that writes a lot of how-to articles and product reviews, I also take a LOT of pictures. Probably more than anyone in the detailing industry, (that is pictures that go with written articles), and I know the value of the saying,

A picture tells a thousand words

And a white towels shows dirt better than a purple, grey or gold towel, or any color towel for that matter and I wanted you all to see all the dirt I pulled off of just one half of the door panel.






Here's a full shot of the door panel - now wait for it....






Removing the 3M Painter's Tape....






Now you can more easily see the before and after difference....







Now this is CLEAN!






And this is still gross!






And look at the dramatic before and after difference in the fabric






Sometimes a simple tape-line will really help to show the before and after difference...







Just to push through, I went ahead and machine cleaned the other half....








Yuck. Being on a door panel, this would be the kind of dirty, oily grime that accumulates off your skin via your arms and hands.







Cleaning Results

Here's the final results from cleaning only. Next I'll apply a vinyl dressing to the vinyl surfaces.







P&S Shape Up Rubber, Vinyl Leather Dressing

Now that the vinyl is surgically clean, next I'll apply a protective dressing that will also restore a rich looking appearance with some added shine.






Keep in mind, most of the time when I do my product reviews not only am I the guy detailing the car, I'm also the guy taking all the pictures and videos, (videos are always on my Facebook page). Thus the reason you see the microfiber pad resting on the arm rest instead of my hand - my camera is in my other hand taking the pictures.






Dampened with product

Because I'm going to use this applicator over all the rest of the vinyl after the cleaning step, I go ahead and dampen the pad with product. AFTER a thorough cleaning on surfaces that have NOT been regularly maintained over years, I like to use both products, heavy or wet. The words heavy and wet mean, a LOT of product. I like to over saturate the surface to make sure there's more than enough product to do the job, be it the cleaner or the protectant and then later, wipe off any excess.








Be thorough... don't miss anything....









Remove any excess product

After applying and allowing the product to penetrate the surface, (to whatever level is possible), I then wipe the surface down with a clean, dry waffle weave (glass) towel to remove any excess product and leave the surface with a matte, dry finish.










Final results

And here are the final results after a thorough cleaning and a thorough dressing.





BEFORE CONDITION

And for context, I've inserted the before picture below.





Review

P&S Express Interior Cleaner

Until this review, I had never used any products from P&S Detailing Products. I grew up in Oregon and while the P&S brand is a West Coast brand, in all the years I detailed, I simply had never seen nor heard of this brand. Of course, keep in mind most of my early detailing years were before the Internet was invented. The thing about the Internet is it introduces all of us to a WORLD of different brand name products that we've never heard of. When I came to Autogeek in 2009, Autogeek didn't carry P&S products, we picked up the brand in 2019.

The first time I used this product was filming a spot for TV for "My Classic Car", with Dennis Gage. You can see that spot here,

How to maintain your cars appearance - P&S Detailing Products on My Classic Car 2020




Anyway, back to my experience using the Express Interior Cleaner for the first time. We had this bitchen streetrod at Autogeek to showcase some other products. As a part of the process, I needed to clean the interior before using another product I was reviewing at the time. On the workbench next to me was a full collection of products we used on My Classic Car for the 2020 season. That's normal, we have all the products we need to shoot B-Roll for and one-by-one, we work through them showing them in short video clips to be used on the TV show.

So I needed to clean this interior and right next to me was the P&S Express Interior Cleaner, so naturally, instead of walking 50 feet out to the warehouse where my "Product Inventory" is kept, and because I was going to need to open this brand new bottle of product, insert the sprayer and use it anyways, I went ahead and used it on the interior of this car. And what I noticed was it actually worked really well and better yet, smelled pretty good too. I didn't take any pictures using the product because I was focused on the other product I was going to use as well as working with Yancy as we busted out video clip after video clip.

Now fast forward to the present and I have this 1963 Plymouth Fury to detail and the interior is filthy. So I use this car to re-visit this product from P&S and just like my experience with the other car, it worked great. I was impressed with it's cleaning ability the first time on a car that was only lightly dirty and super impressed when I really put it to the test as the interior as you can see by the pictures was dirty from years of cleaning neglect.

So I give this cleaner two thumbs up.




P&S Shape Up Interior Dressing

So you cannot clean surfaces like vinyl, rubber and leather without also doing something to make them look good and hopefully protect them at the same time. P&S makes a lot of different dressings for the enthusiast and professional detailing industry but Shape Up looked like the best match for this car and for most people to use after using the Express Interior Dressing. What's nice about both products is they can be used a a wide-spectrum of automotive surfaces. Anytime a cleaner can be used on modern car interior leather - that's a sign it's a safe product. Safe enough for leather, pretty much safe enough for anything. Same goes for the Shape Up dressing. Safe enough for modern car interior leather - more than safe for all the other interior surfaces like vinyl, rubber and plastic.

I like a matte sheen on most car interior surfaces and that's what you get with this product after using it and then wiping any excess off. It restores a natural vibrancy to the surface treated and clean fell to the surface too. In the pictures in the below post, I purposefully took the pictures before wiping any excess off the vinyl surfaces because I wanted the "after" pictures to look like the masses expect a vinyl surface to look after being treated with a vinyl dressing. It's kind of a normal knee-jerk Armor-All reaction. BUT - before returning the car back to the owner I did wipe ALL the vinyl surfaces down with the waffle weave microfiber towels to leave a dry, satin sheen appearance.

The Shape Up was a great follow-up to the Express Interior Detailer with pleasant scent to boot. This twin set of products delivers on performance exactly and P&S advertises. If you've never tired a P&S product before, this combo would be a great set of products to test out.





On Autogeek.com

P&S Xpress Interior Cleaner - $7.99

P&S Shape Up Interior Dressing - $10.99

Cobra Microfiber Applicator Pads - 6 Pack - $12.99

Cobra Waffle Weave Microfiber Glass Towels - 6 Pack - $34.99

Mat & Carpet Scrub Brush - $4.99

Mighty Mini Cordless Polisher - $149.99

FLEX PE-150 Cordless Rotary Polisher - $597.99 - This is the complete system with battery charger and 2 5amp batteries kind of spendy but it will become one of your favorite tools.

Cyclo Brushes

[Mike Phillips]

Continued.....


Well.... the door came out great, now I can't stop there, so here's some pictures showing the rest of the interior getting the P&S cleaning treatment.


These shots are simply showing the results after cleaning both the leather and the fabric with the Express Interior Cleaner.















Dressed

Here's the interior after using the Shape Up dressing on all the cleaned vinyl surfaces....























And of course, the job wouldn't be complete without hitting the dash....













Everything used....
















Final comments...

I'm not a huge fan of the color tan for muscle car interiors, but I am a huge fan of the COLOR CLEAN for muscle car interiors!

This car is ready to race or cruise or take through a drive-thru and feel good about eating in the car.


P&S makes great products you can trust with your hard-earned money.

[Mike Phillips]

Continued.....

Some have you may have noticed, this car has a Tweety Bird Theme, which is kind of cute for a car with a fire-breathing dual-quad, 426 Wedge big block engine!


Tweety Bird






See the front license plate,






Tweety Bird Floor Mats

When I started on the interior, I noticed all the floor mats were upside down? I wasn't sure why but as a part of a normal interior detailing protocols, you remove the floor mats and clean them and this way you can also vacuum the carpets.

In this picture you can see the mats on the floor are upside down.






After removing the mats, I could see the front mats had some type of IMPACT staining going on, possibly mold or mildew staining. Normally, impact staining has physically either impacted onto, or into the materiel and sometimes actually permanently changed the color and/or appearance of the material. That's what the staining looks like in these pictures, its some type of impact staining, maybe if a mold or mildew stain that has permanently changed the color of the mat. So I'll do the best I can but I don't expect 100% perfection.




Cleaning Tweety Bird Floor Mats with P&S Express Interior Cleaner

See the blackish staining on the left hand side of Tweety's head?















So much better! I'd say about 98% removal and 100% improvement!






This looks so much better with the mats cleaned and flipped upright.







Muscle Car History

The Chrysler 426 Wedge Big Block Engine

Being a Chevy guy, I don't know a lot about MOPAR engines so I did a quick search and found this on Wikipedia - Scroll down until you see the section under 426 Wedge. The engine in this Sport Fury is the dual carb model.


The 426 Wedge served as Chrysler's main performance engine until the introduction of the 426 Hemi. It was initially offered as the "non-catalogued" option S42 in Chrysler's (the number of such produced is uncertain), offered with 373 or 385 hp (278 or 287 kW) via a single 4-barrel carburetor (11.0:1 or 12.0:1 compression ratio, respectively), or 413 or 421 hp (308 or 314 kW) via ram-inducted dual 4-barrel carburetors (with the same compression ratios)


Just a FWIW for anyone interested in America's car culture of muscle car history.


And also for what it's worth, this is the kind of car you would see on a lot of the "Car Guy TV shows" on MotorTrend TV.





Especially Mark Worman's show, Graveyard Carz.




So P&S is in good company.

[PaulMys]

Great post, Mike.

I have never missed an episode of Graveyard Carz. Mark Worman is my man!!

[Mike Phillips]

Great post, Mike.

That was a lot of work to get the interior clean and worthy of the car's marque.

I have never missed an episode of Graveyard Carz. Mark Worman is my man!!

I've met Mark a couple of times at the Velocity VIP Cocktail Parties at SEMA - super down to earth and genuinely nice guy.

And while this car is in really good condition, it would be cool to see Mark and his team do an extreme muscle car makeover to it...

[Mike Phillips]

And for those reading this into the future, she's all show and ALL GO!


Here's the owner Carlos giving me the thumbs-up... at this moment, I didn't know he was going to,

Light em up!





















Carlos really laid down some rubber!







The concrete is incredibly coarse...






And that's what a 426 Wedge Engine will do....