My decision on going with this Aztec Hot Rod Extractor was based on size, mobility, suction, and heat.

The reason for size was amount of room I have available in my van, which is very limited. I’m running a Dodge Caravan with just enough room for me and everything else I carry. So a small unit was really my only option.

Mobility of course goes with the biz, you don’t want a big bulky machine when doing mobile interior repairs and detailing. No since breaking your back more then what we already are. It only weighs 18 lbs, so carrying it around from vehicle to vehicle should be a breeze. It does come with casters that you have to install but right now I’m not using them, no real reason other then rolling around in the van. It’s light enough I shouldn’t have to much of a problem, but I do have the option of installing them if needed in the future.

The suction or lift was pretty important too, a lot of the stains or just dirt I run across in vehicles need quite a bit of suction to get them out. This unit carries a whopping 102″ of lift, more then any small unit I researched.

Now heat was probably the most important second to size. The grease and grime that gets tracked into a vehicle is what the dirt sticks to, which no matter how much you vacuum won’t come out. Hot water helps to remove this grease and grime which in turn removes the stains. The Aztec Hot Rod Extractor reaches a temperature of 200 degrees in a matter of about 10 – 15 minutes depending on the temp of water you add.

One thing about this extractor is that it is a hot water ONLY extractor. You don’t add your cleaning chemicals to the fill tank (you’ll void the warranty if you do, so no chemicals! ). Instead you spray your cleaning solution onto the areas your cleaning then using the extractor you remove the chemicals with a blast of hot water. I was a little disappointed in this but really this gives you more control of where you want or need chemical if you think about it. Believe it or not the hot water itself will clean too, a chemical isn’t always needed for cleaning. Also what about rinsing, one of the most important parts of cleaning. If the residues of the cleaning products are left behind they will cause the fibers of carpet and materials to become sticky which will actually attract even more dirt and can also damage the fibers altogether. So basically your cleaning with your chemicals and a little scrubbing and elbow grease then blasting your stains away with 200 degree hot water.

I have only used the Hot Rod a few times now and have to say my research and contemplation has really payed off. I am really pleased with results of this little machine. Here’s the features and specs that helped sway my decision…

• 200°F Heated solution tank
• (110°F water heats to 200°F in 8 minutes)
• Ready to use when dwell time on pre-spray is completed
• 1.5 Gallon solution tank capacity
• 2.5 Gallon recovery tank capacity
• Piston pump delivers 60psi
• 1600 Watt heating element
• Lights indicate when heating and when temp. is reached
• Power requirement less than 15 AMPs
• 50 ft Single flow cord
• 16ft 1 1/4″ ID flexible vacuum hose
• 16ft 3/16″ ID spray hose
• Weight of Spotter without solution is 18lbs.
• Maneuvers easily on 2″ casters
• Easily accessible to fill, empty and clean
• Dimensions of Spotter: 17″ high, 18″ long, 13″ wide
• 3″ stainless steal upholstery detail tool
• 3 year limited warranty

Pretty sweet huh? I thought so too!  This really is a professional extractor and not just some cheap wanna be. I was also told by the Aztec rep that any standard head attachment will fit the Hot Rod Extractor. This makes it nice for adding a crevice tool or any other attachment that fits any other extractor. In fact my last trainee purchased a head that is specifically for upholstery for his extractor. The water jet is set up differently so not to leave the upholstery as wet. Great idea just a little pricey for me right now though, lets get this paying for itself first.

If your looking to add a nice professional extractor to your mobile interior repair and detailing business then I would definitely recommend you take a good look at the Aztec Hot Rod Extractor.

So I thought of giving you a little bit on Stain Removal in Carpet. This is one thing I get a lot of questions for and that is how to get those nasty brown, or black, or even red stains out of the interior carpet of the vehicles I work on on a daily basis.

The trick isn’t to it isn’t really a trick at all, it’s timing and knowledge of what to use where and when. Getting to a spill before it gets a chance to soak in is your best defense against a stain in your carpet. If you spill something wipe it up and soak it up as quickly as possible and then flush with water and soak it up with a towel, or what ever you have at the time. But thats not always the case and thats where this little guide will help you, but really if you can wipe spills up a fast as you can and this helps to get the actual stain out later when you have more time.

One of the most common stains I see in vehicles are footprints or skid marks from dirty and greasy shoes. The answer to this is a degreaser. There are so many different options to use in this situation, but I’m here to make this as simple as possible and effective. Supplies you will need are a couple of white towels, a scrub brush and a mild detergent, like dawn dish soap, a small pail of warm water mixing the soap to 1/4 oz. soap to gallon of water. Dip your brush in the soap and water, scrub the areas lightly with the brush making sure not to soak the carpet then wipe and blot with the towel. Repeat if necessary, wiping and blotting the area with the towel to remove the dirt and grime and the water, you don’t want it to sour later if left wet. If your have a shop vac, use it to suck up the water and to fluff the carpet pile back up to dry better. Place a fan in the vehicle if needed to dry further if you’ve had a bad one.

Now sometimes more then not you will need something a little stronger to get the grease out. I use Castrol Super Clean, the purple stuff. I’ve used Simple Green at times too, and some of the products at some of detail shops I’m at from time to time, so really any good degreaser will work. Just spray the area with the cleaner, scrub with the brush, then wipe it up with a towel. Now if at all possible flush the area with water, this will help to remove the chemicals from the carpet and will help to preserve the natural look to the carpet. Some of those chemicals are pretty strong and if left can damage the carpet.

Soda pop and coffee stains, are another I run across a lot. Now this one can be booger to get out. A coffee stain if left can do permenant damage to the carpet and at times I have had to just dye the carpet to cover up the stain. If coffee is your problem, here are a few tips, catch the spill as quickly as possible then flush with mild soap and water like before with the grease, but you may have to soak it a little more to get it out. Now if this is an old stain, one thing you can try is hydrogen peroxide. This can be used as a mild bleaching agent. Just pore a little in a cup and with a tooth brush scrub it into the stain let sit for about 20-30 minutes then flush with your soapy water solution. If this doesn’t work, I found a product at my local janitorial supply shop called Perculator, it comes in spray bottle and is primarily a peroxide mix, and works pretty good, but it’s still not a miracle worker. Coffee can be a pain, but with a little luck and timing on this one you can get it out. Now soda pop, if it’s not an orange or red which I’ll talk about in a minute, can usually be taken care of with the warm water and soap.

Food stains can range from greasy french fries smashed in the carpet to dried ketchup, to jelly beans and candy. Most of these can be dealt with with your soap and water. Ammonia can be added to the solution to help cut the greasy foods. Scrape the chunks out with a blunt knife before you get wet this will help to not spread the stain further. Candies might take a little more due to dyes added for color, wash as much as possible to remove the candy, if the stain remains you can try peroxide but like I said there are dyes in some candies that do just that, dye the carpet. Gum is another candy that can be removed with mostly picking it out but the rest might take a little chemical. Goof Off is a good one to keep on hand for a lot of different things, but it works great on gum too. After you pick most of it out just take a little Goof Off on a towel and wipe the rest right out.

Red Wine is sort of a food stain but treated a little different. If it’s fresh flush with cold water and soak it up as much as possible. Try even a little club soda and pore directly onto the stain and soak it up with a towel. This should get most of it. One last trick is an enzyme cleaner, enzymes get right to it when it comes to food stains. They are known for removing food stuff stains, but I haven’t had much luck with red wine though so I’ll talk about it in a minute on getting the red stains out of your carpet.

Now if you have a misfortune and happen to get a blood stain on your carpet then this one needs to be handled with cold water and not warm or you will set the stain. If it’s dried then scrap the dried blood with a blunt knife to get the chunks out, vacuum them up, then scrub the area with cold water and a mild soap. Peroxide can be used to help remove the reddish tint if needed. Then flush again with the soap and water, then vacuum with your shop vac. One other remedy is a blood enzyme, which will eat the blood away. Blood Buster is good one, it’s an enzymatic cleaner designed for bio stains.

One that I deal with upon occasion is pet urine. Talk about nasty…but, hey they have to pee too, just not where we always want them to. This one is one you can go to your kitchen for, vinegar, helps to nutralize the acids in the pee. Supplies for this one are paper towels if still wet, white towels, mild soap and warm water, brush and vinegar. First soak up what you can with if it’s still wet with the paper towels, next take your soapy solution of warm water and soap, 1/4oz. of soap to a gallon of water, dip the brush and scrub the area with the soapy water, blot with the towel and repeat until the stain is gone. Afterwards pore a little vinegar over the stain and let set for about an hour. Lastly rinse with water and vacuum with a shop vac or dab with towels until mostly dry. If the stain is still there, let it dry, then apply an enzyme. Enzymes work really well for all bio stuffs including urine. The guys over at Petguest have come up with a 100% enzyme concentrate that is made for the elimination of pet stains and odors.

The old melted crayon stain in the carpet….Man what a mess this can be, but believe it or not it’s pretty easy to remove if you have a clothes iron and a brown paper bag. Scrape the majority away with a blunt knife then lay the brown bag over the crayon and with the heated iron, rub it over the bag over the spot. The heat from the iron will melt the crayon into the bag. Just rotate the bag around to keep a clean side down and after a while the crayon will be on the bag not on the carpet. Patience on this one helps, but again if the spot remains try a little chemical like your Goof Off.

Paint is another carpet stain that can give you a bunch of problems. First thing you need to determine what kind of paint it is. If it’s automotive paint then a solvent paint reducer or thinner can be used to remove it. I usually use lacquer thinner, works fast and removes most paint spills. Now if it’s house paint, then scrape off the excess with a blunt knife and pull out the Goof Off, try not to spread it out to much, work small and from the outside in on the stain. I guess nail polish is a paint, but with this one use nail polish remover or straight acetone with a towel, and again work the stain from the outside in so to not spread it out to far.

Now this is probably got to be the worst carpet stain out there. The red stain in the carpet. This is caused by a #40 Red dye that is put in a lot of drinks like Kool Aid and, red and orange sodas. If you run across this one there is only one way to remove it and thats with a strong chemical. I have found a product that I use on these type of stains and have had really good luck with it, it’s called Red Dye Solution. There are others out there like Red Relief, and Red Out, all work pretty similar. You pore the chemical on the stain, and with a wet white towel and a steam iron you remove the stain. It is a time consuming project and with some luck all of the stain will be removed. Sometimes a little blue hue will be left from the chemical but it sure is a lot better then a bright red stain jumping out at you. But with a little carpet dye over the top and your good as new. You can find these products usually at your local janitorial supply shop or online. I’m working on getting some here on my site, so bare with me.

Stain Removal In Carpet can be frustrating at times, but there no substitute for a professional. These tips can help and may just save you but if you have any problems or feel that the stain is just a little above your head then don’t hesitate to call an automotive interior repair professional like myself to come in a make your life a little easier. For those of you that are the professionals feel free to post your tips in the comments so we can all benefit from your expertise in carpet stain removal.

I can’t help to notice the vehicles that get traded in at the car dealerships I do jobs for on a daily basis. There are the clean ones that the dealers basically take to a mechanic, get them checked out, then do a fluff clean and resale within a short period of time. Then there’s the the ones that they have to, well in short, have to totally take apart, clean, then put them back together and hope they turn out okay. You know what that means, lots of money being spent to restore a vehicle back to a resale-able state, and guess who pays for that….YOU!

When you go to trade in your car, one thing that happens is your salesman or the sales manager will go out look at your car and then drive it. If the car is not clean, the guy takes that into consideration when he comes back to give you an offer, and believe me you will get an offer thats considerable lower then it should be. It lowers the resale value considerably when you pull up in a car that smells like Fido’s butt and looks like more food went on the carpets and other parts in the car then went into your mouth, or the dash looks like it has a carpeted cover on it, no wait, that’s just dust.

I can’t believe how many cars that come through the car lots that are just down right nasty. Just think of how much more money they probably would have made off of their trade, if they would have just cleaned the vehicle.

It’s not that hard to keep your car clean. I know in our busy lives its really hard to find time to clean out our cars, but just think how much money you can save in the end if you do. Your car is an investment of your hard earned cash.

Vacuum your car out at least every two to three weeks, more often if you can, this helps to keep the sand and dirt from getting ground down though the carpet and into the pad. Which keeps your carpet looking better longer and helps to cut down on wear on the carpet.

If you spill something on the carpet try to wipe it up as soon as possible, now I know thats not going to happen on every spill, I have 4 kids and spills don’t always get announced. Today was a perfect example.

I took a bucket of warm water, mixed with a generous amount of Mr. Clean, and a scrub brush and went to town. Now I didn’t soak the carpet, but I gave it a good scrubbing, then wiped it with a towel and then took my shop vac and sucked up the dirty water solution. Not only did it clean it good, but it also killed all the germs because as you know Mr. Clean kills germs. One thing to keep in mind is the amount of germs and allergen’s that live on the inside of a vehicle, keeping it clean keeps those nasty little critters out. Now my carpet is germ free and it smells nice too, not like a Tahoe full of kids. Now I’m not saying that Mr. Clean is the way to clean your carpet because there are a lot better products for carpet that work really well and probably better, but it worked well for me at the time and did some kid germ proofing too.

Wipe the rest of your vehicle down with a wet micro fiber towel, these little towels are wonders. They clean better then any other towel I’ve ever come across. I first came across the micro fiber towel back when I was doing exterior touch up, about 10 years ago. We used them for removing excess wax and rubbing compound, and wow what a time saver. They worked so much better then the terry cloth towel, they took the excess off so much quicker and left a better shine and also didn’t leave those fine scratches you get from a terry towel. At the time they were pretty expensive, but now you can get them pretty cheap. In the interior they work just as good. They advertise that they clean with just water without cleaners, and really they do a pretty good job without cleaners. All you have to do is wet it down with warm water and get to wiping. If you run across a spot that it won’t get off, try a little dish washing soap mixed in a bucket of warm water and scrub the area with the wet micro fiber towel or even a scrub brush, being careful not to let water run down into electrical parts. For those stubborn black marks on the plastic, try a Scotch Brite pad wet with your bucket of Mr. Clean and warm water and scrub the mark gone, now be careful not to scrub to hard, you don’t want to leave a scuff mark or remove dye.
Sparkle Auto Microfiber Towel – 12 Pack

Now I’m not one for all that slicky pucky (that’s my word for interior dressing or the shiny stuff), there’s no substitute for clean, spraying all that shiny stuff in the interior seems to cause more problems then what its worth. Not only does it make dust stick to your pieces and parts in the interior, but in some cases it can damage some of the trim pieces that are dyed with a water based dye, it has a tendency to cause the dyes to peel.

Lastly a little tip on the smell good gels in a can, or the oils that clip on your vents, or the sprays you spray around to make your vehicles smell better. This is really more of warning then a tip, they cause damage, yep, damage. I’ve run across a few vehicles that this stuff has ate the finish right off. Not really sure whats in this stuff but it causing a lot of damage to dashes, console areas, and vents. So if you use these thing be careful where you put them or spray them. Try to find a spot in the vehicle thats not going to cause and accident, one suggestion is under the seat. When spraying don’t ever spray the dash or instrument panels. I like some of these smell good stuffs as much as the other person but when I spray a vehicle down I’ll spray the carpet and cloth seats only, or even the A/C intake, but never right into the vents directly. I also use oder foggers, but I always am cautious of where I point the thing or when I set one off in a car I’ll lay towels down to avoid any drippings getting on the trim pieces.

I’ve keep my wife’s Chevy Tahoe as clean as possible knowing I’m not going to drive it forever and that someday I will trade it in. We love our Tahoe and plan to get a few more miles out of it. But when the day comes to trade it in on a new one I plan on getting top dollar.

By keeping your car clean on a regular basis will not only be a healthier investment of your time, but an investment of your money when it comes to resale value. A clean car brings more money then dirty one, period.