FrozenWS6

I inherited a new 1500psi pressure washer that I've been using on most of these mats and that helped a little, but even putting it practically up against the mat can only cut a little of this mess off. That's why when everything I had tried wasn't working well enough. I decided to post here to get ideas and see if anyone else ever had this issue. Weathertech just want's to sell me their stuff, not actually solve my problem. Then with the price of freight on it, it would be about $60.00 per bottle which isn't practical since that freight will add up to being a lot of lost money at the end of the year. So I was hoping I could get respectable results from some Adams products or an equivilant. Never heard of it. Probably not something easy to find in Alaska. Which means and expensive experiment just to try it out. There are very limited resources up here especially for detailing supplies.

Thanks for helping experiment. Yours turned out a lot better then any of mine have. I'm always interested in learning what others are doing to see if it'll work for me. What's funny to me is what you started with is what these have looked like after I scrubbed the crap out of them. I wish these were that clean when I start. I didn't have much luck with the Blue Adam's tire brush. The bristle length just bends over and doesn't even scrub into the dirt, just seems to go across the surface of this caked and heater baked on dirt. That's why I use a stiffer short bristle brush to get down into the dirt. I think I posted a picture of earlier. I haven't had a chance to try to find a stiffer short bristle brush to see if it can dig the dirt out of the textures better, but that is my next step. Do you think they dye these black? I know they do seem very porous. Even yours at 1.5 years old seem to be looking very faded and more greyish too. Like the last set I did. Maybe that's just how this plastic fades but my personal Husky liners have less fading then that at 5 years old.

^. Brushing lol. That wouldn't do anything to these. I'm scrubbing the crap out of them and yes they were removed from the vehicles to be cleaned. I've been detailing for over 20 years. This is just the first time I've experienced crappy floor liners like this that won't come clean.

Yeah I agree with these being too slippery. I had tried straight vrt on my personal mats once a while ago and didn't like it. Wasn't even going to go there again. Misting a 50-50 vrt/water mix in the low spots and wiped off and excess on the high spots wasn't too bad with slickness. I'm not sure how old some of these are but it seems like some are showing wear fairly fast in my opinion. You guys are lucky you don't have this kind of calcium chloride, slip, mud mix down there.

Very true. But many people still expect or think it'll look like brand new and that's not possible since things wear and fade from the sun. Just tried it. Felt pretty slippery to me with with the heels of my work boots.

Yeah this is what I've been trying to accomplish. To have them look decent and acceptable. When a customer wants the inside cleaned and they open the door and the mats are still dirty looking and dirty at the edges that's not good or acceptable in my book. I was ashamed of those other mats. They were killing me. I do bring the customer down to reality about what there going to get back because of the wear and how long or what has caused a stain as to how well it would come out.

This is what I'm wanting to see when I clean these damn things. Lol This is the finished mats from yesterday. Scrubbed the same as all the others but topped with TID. The only thing I'm not sure how well it'll be with shoes because they feel a little slippery to the touch.

Haha. This is normal everyday Alaska dirty. This is the before of yesterday's.

Criss, cross and diagonal, I've done and tried it all.I did try it with two applications. I'm not a big fan of tire and rubber cleaner. I like it for trim, but not tires or floor mats. Doesn't seem to be very strong. Having to do something 2 or 3 times to get it clean with only ok results costs me money because it takes extra time and puts me behind on a job. The leather and interior cleaner wouldn't touch it either. This last set I did yesterday seemed to turn out the best so far. After I soaked and scrubbed it, I topped it with Total Interior Detailer (sprayed on and let dry, wiping it didn't work.) I haven't gotten an after pic yet but I'll get one this morning.

I was trying to find another brush but haven't seen anything that would work yet. There's one more place I just thought of to check. Make sure you ask for Lisa to drive one up. Lol I'll have to try that again.

Sorry got busy the other day. Here is my brush, it's what I would call a medium bristled brush. Works great on tires and all other floor mats. I even scrub the direction of the high or low design of the mat.

That is a possibility that the road slop has attacked them. They are 4 hours ahead so when I get caught up at the end of the day they've been closed already. I'll have to try when I'm freed up one morning. It just bums me out I do a really nice detail and then you open the door and the mats aren't totally clean. That doesn't look good to customers. I might try spraying SG on it and let it soak then using the steamer next time.

I'll search around for that. I have B W and it works better then everything else I've tried but not well enough for my expectations. Unfortunately these are customers mats. If they were mine I'd grow to deal with it. I use and have huskyliners in all of my trucks which are extremely easy to keep clean compared to the WT.

Thanks. I'll have to try SG again dry this time and letting it soak longer. I can't remember if I let it soak last time before I scrubbed them. The VRT I mixed 1:1 with water and use a spray bottle so it's only barely misted across the mat. Just mostly on the places where I couldn't get the dirt off not the whole mat. I did my personal mats once with VRT and the foam applicator block and did notice they got a little slippery when wet. Never did that again. They had also seemed like they got dirtier faster. That's why it I'm trying to figure out what's going to clean these things completely. But I'm not getting the results I expect from anything I've tried so far. I've tried scrubbing twice, using a pressure washer nothing has given me something I'd be happy with. That's disappointing that the WT stuff didn't do good either for you. I'm thinking my next step is taking a round scrub brush and fabbing it up so I can put it on my drill and let it do some serious scrubbing. To get into those edges better. Maybe I need a stiffer brush, I use my old brand x short bristled tire brush that works awesome on tires and my personal mats.

I hit them with a brand x tire cleaner after the L&IC because the Adams stuff doesn't even touch it. I tried the Adams tire cleaner the first set I did a while ago and quickly moved on to other products. That would be interesting to know how G&G would work. But as hard as it is to get the Weather tech stuff up here it looks like I may have to pay the $40 in freight alone to make these damn things clean. Then raise my price to cover the high dollar cleaner. Lol

Got to try Leather and Interior Cleaner on a set today. Still ended up with the same results. I scrubbed like crazy and still couldn't make them clean at the edges. Drives me crazy. They shouldn't be that hard to clean.

Dan. That twist is how that block was when I pulled it out of the new kit I just received. Not from my pressure. If the scratches were from too much pressure there would be even more across the whole hood and once I folded that block in half so that corner didn't touch my issue went away. Unfortunately that corner did contact the paint because I was using the flat side of the block and as you can see that corner is not square with the flat side. So it would contact the paint easily, but originally I didn't think it was enough to be an issue. I did think about the possibility of contamination but if there was, it must have been stuck on that corner that I couldn't see because like I said I folded the block and applied more with no issues in my process of elimination to figure out what caused it. I'm glad I caught it and it came out easily too. It gets delivered tomorrow so I'm hoping he's speechless and amazed. Again I hope my real world experience and lesson (I've learned) helps others here watch for and how to fix it if they do encounter something like this.

SS LeadFoot if I get a set in soon I'll try it too. Rich. I tried tire and rubber cleaner and APC full strength and it did less then my brand x I use. The thing I did on the last set was spray them off with the high pressure and let them soak which gave me a little better results. Then respray them and scrub. I wasn't letting the first ones soak at all. Also up here in the winter with all the snow, salt and slop we get in our trucks people don't usually clean the inside. Since it's too cold outside to work and many people's garages are full of other toys and or storage they can't get their vehicles inside.

And it's all coated and ready for Boost tomorrow now. It turned out great after the curveball it threw me.

Honestly I don't care about them getting shiny. I'm just trying to get them clean for my customers. All the products I've tried have had ok results but not anything I can say that got them even 95% clean.

Also for comparison here is the left twisted(block that scratches) next to another new block on the right.

Ok guys. Looks like the solution here is, I rebuffed the fender and half the hood that had scratches with the orange Paint Correting Polish. The scratches came out well and I'm going to recoat the hood and fender since I can't tell if I buffed through the paint coating.

The coating is a great product. This is the third car I've done all darker colors that I've posted threads of here on the forum. This is the first issue I've encountered with it. Not really a big deal, but one I thought should be posted here so hopefully it doesn't happen to anyone else since there isn't much posted here about the coatings and experiences with it or how to fix this type of stuff if it does happen.

Thanks for the info guys. I'm still trying different techniques and products that are working for you guys. To see what works for me with our winter dirt/salt/calcium chloride mix they use on our winter roads. I had another car/set come through last week and so I pulled them out and sprayed them down with my preferred brand x tire rubber cleaner. Then had some customers come in and when I got back out to scrub them I had to respray my cleaner, scrub and rinse. This set turned out the best so far. I was satisfied this time. Still put a little diluted VRT on them and didn't have to drowned them with it this time.

It was a brand new applicator I pulled out of a new kit I had just received on Friday. So if there was anything on it it would have gotten stuck to it when it was originally packaged. It is possible that this paint is extremely soft and the extra firmness of that seamed/sewn corner on that block made it easy to leave the scratches.