If anyone cleans up back-seat spills on a regular basis, it's Domenic Mastro, owner of Domenic's Limousine Service of West Roxbury and Franklin. "In this business you see everything - beer, vomit. People don't ride real well backwards," Mastro says. No need to elaborate on that.
Last week we talked about how to scrub down your car's exterior. But what about interior grime, stains, smells, and torn seats?
Mastro's cleaning tips are fairly standard. For carpets, use a wet vacuum cleaner that briefly soaks stains. For leather, use the same product you clean your leather sofa with. ("I end up taking my wife's Armor All all the time," he said.) For upholstery stains, buy a professional car cleaner - but avoid petroleum-based products, as they can damage car plastics, Mastro said.
Ridding your car of bad odors, like cigarettes or wet dog, is difficult but not impossible. Mastro recommends buying scented cabin air filters (many cars have a place for one under the windshield wipers).
"They're mostly either coffee-based scents or bean-based scents. Those are the scents that get in your nose, and once they do, you don't smell the smoke," he said. "It's a bait-and-switch kind of thing."
If you can't buy a filter, you could try leaving a few sheets of Febreze fabric freshener under your seats, or spray the interior with bottled Febreze, said Winchester's Jim Miga, who runs his own car-detailing business, the Garage Valet. Alternatively, you could buy an ionizer air-freshening machine for about $100 at a major hardware store, or ask if your car dealer will ionize your interior.
"They claim that works most of the time," Miga said.
Tyler Burns, assistant director of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, adds that it's not a bad idea to clean out your air vents with Q-tips if smells persist.
To get rid of annoying pet hairs, try duct tape. Lay strips down on the upholstery and rip them off as if you're waxing off hair.
"I've used the roller tape, which works good, but duct tape is stronger," Miga said. "Even with duct tape, you have to do it two or three times. Dog hair just sticks to upholstery."
Back-seat doggie drool, he adds, cleans up easily with soap and water. Just don't soak your upholstery for any amount of time. "You don't want water to go under the upholstery where you can't dry it," Miga said.
"One of the things I find is, where people are in their cars and drinking a lot of coffee, the worst part of the car is the console area. I see coffee stains that drip down from the console into the seat," Miga said. "When I clean, I move the seat as far back as possible and try to clean the side of the console. Then I move it as far forward as I can. Usually you can get the whole area. And with coffee, it cleans up easily with a damp cloth."
As for tears, kits abound for repairing leather or upholstery, but the experts say you can only make your seat look so good without having a professional reupholstery job. Scratches and cracks on your dashboard, however, can often be fixed by gluing the crack together and applying colored gels or textured patches from a dashboard repair kit.
"Most people think it's a more labor-intensive process than it is. I typically Super Glue and wait a half an hour before I put the [patch] on," Burns says. "You won't even notice it."
For windows, Miga recommends Sprayway glass cleaner, a bit more expensive than Windex but "it really doesn't streak." To clean the grime embedded in cup holders, Miga recommends simple elbow grease.
"I've got toothbrushes and towels. You just try to get in there as best you can," he said.
And if you're that worried about getting stains in your newly purchased car, pay a little extra and Scotchgard the upholstery. "With any gold cloth interior, I would recommend doing that," Burns said.
Wheel dust and rust
A word on wheel dust, which we didn't get to last week. Front wheels tend to get dirty from dust emitted by brake pads, and if you don't clean your wheels periodically the grime will never come off, the experts said.
"It starts out as dust and you add road grime and oil and they act as a hardening agent," said Burns.
"Look at the front wheels - they're always dirtier than the rear wheels," said Mastro. "In the old days your father had acid. They used to spray it on the wheel. Now, we don't do that."
Instead, just buy a standard wheel-cleaner spray at the auto parts store and spray every few washes.
As for rust, you have to get it off the car. Just painting over it won't do. "The only way you get it out is by grinding it out and getting to the metal. Then you can prime it and paint again," said Mastro. If that sounds like too much work, you're better off bringing your car to the shop.
