I am no good with carpet

I am no good cleaning carpets, I use a shop vac with prestone inteiror cleaner then a shop vac again.....its looks ok but it still doesnt look dark and new, has a white look tomy black inteiror, are these chemicals suspended in the carpet? what can I do better, what an I doin wrong?

if all you have is the shop vac go and take the filter out..... get a water hose with a steady and slow flow of water and as you saturate the carpet immediately extract. Be careful around any electronics such as power seats, etc.
Your current method is not adequately rinsing the cleaner out of the carpet fibers .

You will see a difference when you start rinsing this way

Get some fabric rinse from a reputable local janitorial supply store. This will neutralize the carpet shampoo that you use and allow for non sticky, clean and fluffy carpet fibres.

good luck

grant,

Left over soap residue will only hinder the whole cleaning process. It makes the carpets dull and in fact they will attract MORE dirt and grime!

You need to find a good pre-spot cleaner and carpet de-greaser, one that does not foam up. There are some ok products one can buy at their local Pep Boys. One is Chem Dry's "stain extinguisher", which I believe Blue Magic also makes a similar product. I also believe that Blue Coral makes a good "odor nuetralizer" foaming carpet cleaner which is good to have as it is harder to saturate the carpet thus leading to a difficult rinsing step.

Lastly, ask your local carpet care store or janitor supply house what they use and recommend.

Anthony

if I take a hose to my inteoiror carpet, it will dry ok and not get stuck and eventually rust my floor pan?

do yourself a favor and keep things as dry as possible so you don't run into an odor problem,i like the dri-clean foam as it works well and stinks up the interior pretty good so it smells clean
mike at the shine shop

so dont hose down my inteiror?

I WOULDN'T!. i can remember some of the flood cars of the early 90's. these guys would take a pressure washer and blow the carpet out, then wet vac. if it was humid or rainy outside they would never dry. when they did, they would stink horribly becasue of the mold and mildew.

Well, this is my new formula for cleaning carpet. A large bucket, clothing detergent and some oxiclean. I use dump some soapy water into the footwell and scrub like a mad man. Once I scrub everything back to color, I vac using a shop vac. After I vac the entire car, I get a bucket of clear rinse water, pour some into the foot well and move it around to enusre I get all the soap, then vac again. I did this last week, my interior has never been cleaner, even when I bought the car, was used tho

Just used the Bissell Green Macine on my 2000 Monte Carlo SS. Carpet is a dark charcoal bordering on black. The floor mats were a breeze and came out very clean. Of course I could lay these on a work bench and use the full potential of the Green Machine. I bought the model with the heater and turbo brush features. A hundered bucks at Target. The turbo brush works great until you get to the interior of the car. It's just to big to fit all the curvetures of the floor. width is not the problem it is the length of the tool that is the hindrance. It comes with another brush attachment which was a bit smaller and worked much better on the interior. you are still not going to get into every little crevice. I am not a big fan of pulling seats out of a car particularly someone elses unless it is a obviously simple process. However this would allow the Green Machine to do a much better job. Overall the machine did a very nice job. The water that was extracted was very dirty letting you know you were accomplishing something. It does leave the carpet a bit damp requireing you to either wet vac or leave the doors open for a hour to dry throughly before replacing floor mats. Floor mats and seats are were the Green Machine excells but overall a good investment.

I cringe at some of the carpet cleaning tactics used by many of you here. I would never put a water hose anywhere near the interior nor apply so much water that it can be swished around in the interior.

I may get some hate mail in response to my opinion here but I cannot help but see how harmful these carpet cleaning processes are and not only that but we then have the unneeded extra working and drying time.

Again I express here that one only need a good carpet pre-spotter and a carpet de-greaser. The pre-spot for stains such as ink, lipstick and food spills. Another pre-spot designed for pet stains, blood and vomit. A carpet de-greaser rounds you out for the most obvious car carpet stain, which is grease and oil brought into the mats from the drivers shoes and oily grimy parking lots. I also use a active micro-organism odor killer which actually kills the bacteria which causes odors. I never need to apply water to any of my carpets or fabric seats, water is meant for the outside, not inside.

Anthony

You guys must have visions of flooding a car with a hose....... if you dont somehow rinse the carpet you arent doing a good job........ I dont care what chemicals you recommend if you leave them in the carpet you arent doing a good job. Period

Like this thread started "I am no good with carpet"....... I am good with carpet

the extractors work great. a good rinse with warm water will really get a smell out and remove the sticky soap that causes re-soiling. just smelling the extracted water in the waste tank is enough to make you sick. the pressure washer thing was sad because the guys thought they wet vaccumed thoroughly but when you stomped the gas pedal or parked on an incline all the water would leave its hiding places and end up in puddles in the low lying spots. i also use the active bacteria carpet cleaner and it seems to do a good job. after using the extractor for a few years, you really start to realize it isn't always what you see at first on the carpet but what you remove. now if the prices would come down on the heavy duty units i'd be satisfied!

The Bissel Green Machine that I have has become a simple wet/dry vac because the pump for the cleaning fluid tank took a dump a few years ago.

What I usually do is after spraying the carpet with cleaner and scrubbing, I use the Bissel to pull up as mush of the soapy solution as possible first.

This eliminates excessive 'sudsing' during the rinse scrubbing. Then I either take a spray bottle of clear water, or lightly use the garden hose to rinse small areas and using the Bissel at the same time to keep excess water from building up inthe interior. Once the water being pulled up by the Bissel is clear, I stop with the rinse water, and spend 5-10 minutes and continue 'extracting' until the carpets are damp, not wet.

Too, I divide the carpet into 4 'zones' for cleaning; driver, driver rear. Passenger & passenger rear. I work one zone at a time until it's complete, then move to the next.

Floor mats on the other hand are easy, pull 'em out and HOSE 'EM DOWN.



Don M
'02 Cavalier LSSC
2200 DOHC

Hey guys, why all the scrubbing and whining. Just take an hour and go down to the local professional carpet cleaning supply store and get your selves some proper chemicals. You can use a shopvac if thats all you have and still do them O.k. Just get a traffic lane cleaner and a fabric rinse. try to go with a lane cleaner with low residue, the people will know what you mean, just ask them, they will hook you up. For routine cleaning you should have these chemicals anyway. Along with two pump sprayers for easy and non irratating cleaning. Your investment about ,$50 if yo already have a shop vac, at that price you will have enough chemical to last you years, if yo are only doing your own cars. Good luck and stop breaking your backs its all in the technique!

Well Don I went into the local vacum shop today to get some more filters for my shop vac and I saw your Bissel Green Machine. I asked the salesman what he thought of it and he said they were going to stop selling them because they were constantly having customers return them with bad pumps. lol I thought of you when he told me this. Actually I was considering it for mobile jobs where I could take it along easily since it is fairly small, but after you and the salesman telling me the same story I kinda doubt I will ever have a Bissel machine. lol

My shop vac is actually doing what I need right now so I havent invested in a real carpet extractor yet. I purchased a few Bissel tips that fit right onto my shop vac hose and suck up just like a real extractor except it doesnt spray. I just make a solution in a spray bottle and them suck it up with my vac and it has worked ok for me.

John

Yeah dude, just save your money and buy the real thing in a few months, the shop vac will get you by

Hello All:
I have a problem with some carpet in the Honda I just purchased (used) but I guess the previous owner never wiped his or her feet before entering the car. It has about a foot and a half by 2 foot area that looks like grease. I have cleaned it several times and it comes out looking great but after a week or so it looks just the same as it did before. I don't want the floor mats to hide this, I just want to get rid of it. Can anyone help me with this matter. The cleaner that I used was called resolve. Thanks, Johnny



Johnny Hopper

Look at my previous post and try all of the steps I mentioned, or take it to a reputable detail shop, a reputable shop is hard to come by, shop around.