Automotive Interior Repair with The Interior Guy

Just wanted to put this color chart up here for you do it yourself people who are looking to match a Sem Aerosol vinyl and leather colors to the interior upholstery parts of your automobiles. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve run across this one a lot lately. Leather seats turning a shade of Blue on the lighter colored tan and gray leather seats. It’s what I call “Suit Blue”.

What this really is, is when the leather turns a blue color where your back, butt, or arm rests on the wet leather and the dye from your clothing is then transferred to the leather.

The dye from your clothing is actually dyeing the leather in your car. The leather soaks it up like a sponge, like I’ve always said “What you put on leather stays in leather”, and as you see it’s true.

Whats really bad about this is there’s is no cleaner to remove this from the leather without damaging the leather or the leather’s original dye, at least not one that I know about.  Your only solution to this is to have the seats, armrests, ect. resurfaced or dyed to bring it back to it’s original color. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey guys…It’s been a while since I’ve posted a helpful tip to add to your arsenal of automotive interior repairs I’ve given here on my blog.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Today at work as I was working on a pretty badly cracked up Jeep Grand Cherokee leather seat, and my wife and youngest showed up to say hi. It was quite a nice break from a mind bending repair. She does that every once in a while, it’s great being my own boss and being able to take a break when I want to. As I was saying bye and corralling my 5 year old back into our 2001 Chevy Tahoe, I couldn’t help to notice the carpet. GROSS, and that was an understatement. So ya all know what I did when I got home from work, cleaned carpet. Something my wife has been trying to get me to do now forever. But working on vehicles all day that’s usually the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is work on another car but sometimes we have to do what our boss says. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a little glitch yesterday when I went to upgrade my WordPress blog and lost my forum. I had to do a little work to get the whole thing going for a while, it was all messed up. There were a couple of WordPress plugins that I had to maneuver around and eliminate to get my blog going, but I’m back but with no forum for now. I am in the process of installing another forum that is going to be a lot better and easier for me and you, so stay tuned for that. Read the rest of this entry »

You left the car window down or the sunroof open and there’s a water stain in your car’s leather seat….or your girlfriend spilled here red wine in your leather car seat on a night out on the town….or your kids decided they were a soon to be artist and tried their techniques out on your leather car seat with a pen, arrggg. Got kids myself, so feel your pain. Stain removal in leather seats can be tough, heres a few tricks to help get you going. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post I had talked about the cloth seats in the Ford and Chrysler vehicles and how hard it was to get the bad stains out and that I was looking for a cleaner to remove these stains. I think I’ve found the secret. Foam, yes I said foam. A foaming spray cleaner with a scrub brush and towel. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve noticed in the late model Ford and Dodge trucks that the seats hold stains like a magnet. As far as spot cleaning, well good luck. For some reason Ford and Dodge have gone to a really tight woven fabric in their seats, don’t know if its for a cost reason or a cosmetic reason. Whatever it is I don’t like it, and from what I’ve heard around the car lots is that they don’t like the cloth seats either. They all have bad stains, and they are having a time trying to get them out. The bad stains are like water spots in the cloth. Well, the only way I have found to removing the bad stains is by scrubbing the seats with a brush with soap and water, and soaking the entire seat , then extracting the soapy water out with an automotive extractor. Basically what you are doing by soaking the seat is creating one big water spot… I know this sounds weird but it works. Then dry the seats with towels to get some of the moisture out, then turn your truck’s heat on high, close the windows and let it run for about 30 minutes to complete the drying process, because u don’t want a mildewy truck either. So, good luck cleaning your bad stains in your cloth seats, I hope this little trick works for you.