flybynight512
New member
- Aug 9, 2013
- 4
- 0
Hello all,
I'm new to this detailing thing and have run into an odd situation with the rear seats of my car. It's a 2003 Hyundai Elantra. (And black, of course... dear God, why did I buy a black car? I wish I'd been reading this forum back then.) A year or so ago some juice from cooking a ham was spilled on the back seat and left a small medium-dark stain.
I recently attacked it with some diluted 303 spot remover. It worked like a charm - I was mopping up surprising amounts of dark brown liquid, even from areas that hadn't been visibly stained. I figured the spill must have soaked into the seat a lot more than I thought.
Here's where it started getting strange. When I added more water and spot remover, the brown color seemed to get pushed out to the edge of the wet area. When I sprayed that down, the stain spread further out again. I was wiping with an MF cloth between passes, and pulling out water that was visibly brown each time. I ended up chasing an ever-expanding, ever-lightening stain out nearly to the seat edge. I decided to leave it alone at that point, as it was fairly light and I didn't want to make it worse. When I went to clean the other seats in the car, much to my surprise the other side of the back seat (opposite where the original spill had been) also had the same problem. The front seats did not, and I've cleaned other cars with the same technique without this issue. What in the world is going on? The seatbelts in the back are also acquiring a brown stain where the connect to the seat, and those stains spread like crazy when I try to clean them as well.
I've heard that soy-based foam can leave brownish stains when it gets wet, but Ford was only just starting to experiment with it in their seats in 2003. I can't find any confirmation one way or the other, but it doesn't seem likely that Hyundai would be putting that in their mid-range cars at that time.
Any insight? Any thoughts on lifting the current brown staining without making it worse?
I'm new to this detailing thing and have run into an odd situation with the rear seats of my car. It's a 2003 Hyundai Elantra. (And black, of course... dear God, why did I buy a black car? I wish I'd been reading this forum back then.) A year or so ago some juice from cooking a ham was spilled on the back seat and left a small medium-dark stain.
I recently attacked it with some diluted 303 spot remover. It worked like a charm - I was mopping up surprising amounts of dark brown liquid, even from areas that hadn't been visibly stained. I figured the spill must have soaked into the seat a lot more than I thought.
Here's where it started getting strange. When I added more water and spot remover, the brown color seemed to get pushed out to the edge of the wet area. When I sprayed that down, the stain spread further out again. I was wiping with an MF cloth between passes, and pulling out water that was visibly brown each time. I ended up chasing an ever-expanding, ever-lightening stain out nearly to the seat edge. I decided to leave it alone at that point, as it was fairly light and I didn't want to make it worse. When I went to clean the other seats in the car, much to my surprise the other side of the back seat (opposite where the original spill had been) also had the same problem. The front seats did not, and I've cleaned other cars with the same technique without this issue. What in the world is going on? The seatbelts in the back are also acquiring a brown stain where the connect to the seat, and those stains spread like crazy when I try to clean them as well.
I've heard that soy-based foam can leave brownish stains when it gets wet, but Ford was only just starting to experiment with it in their seats in 2003. I can't find any confirmation one way or the other, but it doesn't seem likely that Hyundai would be putting that in their mid-range cars at that time.
Any insight? Any thoughts on lifting the current brown staining without making it worse?
