seat laundering pics: before and after

[dlb]

i'm so mad right now because i took pics of these seats when they were filthy and mouldy, but it seems that i deleted them before uploading them to photobucket. regardless, i still have the older photos (pre-mould) that i can use as reference so i'll go on anyway.

i just washed the front seats from ted, the parts car. as i mentioned, though only the driver seat wing had a few small holes, all were filthy, stained, and both bottoms were mouldy. i washed them like crazy last night using 'stain away' pre-treatment, lots of soap, a bit of bleach, hot wash water, and did it five times. the result was remarkable. they are not perfect but i'd rate them at about 85%, which is especially remarkable considering how they were before.

before (and before the mould)



after

bottom #1



bottom #2



back #1 and head rests



all



the other back is being mended by my friend and thus absent from the shots. i'll post the final pics once the seats are all assembled. i think i've convinced myself to wash the seats in ron this spring/summer.

[splatterdog]

If there's anything leftover make a vest! You could then be THE geekiest T4 owner alive. haha

[Petros]

And a matching British golf hat to go with it!

Cleans up nice. Amazing how well the fabric holds up, consider it is over a quarter century old!

[dlb]

all finished this job. i had my friend, a professional seamstress, repair two holes and a tear along the seam of the driver seat back. the seam just had to be taken in but for the holes, she darned them and then added some leftover sweatshirt material as backing to strengthen the remaining fabric. she did an awesome job.

exterior of the repairs.



the inside view of the repairs. note the darker sweatshirt material on the left.



close up of the interior repair.



put this cover on and the seats are done. i'm really happy with how they turned out.

driver seat (formerly the passenger seat covers and foam)



passenger seat (formerly the driver seat covers and foam)



rear seat backs



rear bench



the whole gang, chilling in my crawlspace



i learned a lot from this round of cleaning. i'm glad i took more time with the washing because i found was able to get 90-95% of all stains out. it just took a lot of washing, stain away spray, hot water, bleach, and 'delicate' washes. i also removed the carpet from the parts car and gave it the same treatment and was amazed at how it turned out too. the rear carpet had had a mighty stain in the driver side foot well which cleaned up quite easily. those are sitting in the crawlspace too, in case anyone is interested in them. not mint, but in good shape. i removed all the underlay to wash them but you can replace that if you want.

[ARCHINSTL]

Boy, lookin' great!
It was definitely worth it!
Tom M.

[Jamminfargo]

another awesome informative post!!! Thanks for sharing

[4doorVIP]

looks like a party in there, those are the cleanest looking plaid turd seats I have ever seen! lol
how hard were the seat skins to come off?

looks great bw

[dlb]

thanks! these seats are in toughtercel's daily driver now.

the covers take some time to remove and replace. the second time i did it was much quicker than the first though. i'd say it takes 2 hrs to remove the seats and the covers, and then a bit more to replace them. the hogs rings can be a pain to work with but i am used to them now and don't find them too bad. some guys just use plastic zip ties or zap straps, whatever you call them, instead of the hogs rings when replacing the covers.

[drege]

Know its an old thread but this is of interest to me, can anybody see any reason not to use zip ties?

[dlb]

in the post just above yours, i mentioned that some guys use zip ties instead of hog rings. i think it should be fine as long as you use fairly broad, heavy zip ties. i wouldn't use small, thin ones as they might not hold against the pressure. it would suck to have to pull the seat and redo them if that were the case.

[drege]

Right, I just think that maybe where the seat back hinges against the seat bottom that there may be chafe from a zip tie knot that could damage the seat bottom over time - if, as it were, there was enough reclining action over a long enough time line.

This thread makes me happy, I wetted, scrubbed and shop vac'd my S-10 blazer seats (red & grey tweed) and though they came clean the chafe of the brush and shop vac pipe frayed some of the higher traffic spots of the tweed, irreparably damaging them.
My tercel has the grey & blue tweed centers, already has a crotch area chafe rip, so low chafe cleaning method is of particular interest to me.

[dlb]

yes, that's actually a very valid point. in my first terc, i used a small rug doctor to clean the seats and found that the abrasive scrubbing really damaged the old tweed-ish fabric. now i try to be as gentle as possible when doing spot cleaning like that. if something requires serious treatment or affects a larger area, pulling the seat covers off is the best way to deal with it.