Last week, a customer called and her situation was that a protein shake had spilled between the rear console and rear passenger seat. She didn’t have the equipment, know-how, or desire, to clean the spill from her tan colored Acura MDX carpet. It had a gnarly smell as well; the protein shake had been sitting on the carpet for a couple of weeks. Its texture was hard as a rock. Finally, after a couple of weeks, the customer called to schedule an appointment being that she could no longer handle the odor. Below, we will explain our process of removing a protein stain from a car interior.
The first part of this cleaning process was to loosen the protein. It had a very tough texture, much like hardened glue. Our vapor steamer produces steam at 320 degrees, making it quick work to loosen and break down the solid protein shake. After the stain was somewhat loosened, we used our extractor to vacuum up must of the spill as possible.
Typically, we vacuum the entire area of the car carpeting before we shampoo and steam clean. However, for this example, we are just covering this small area. We use a very potent extractor soap shampoo. It’s a high pH, low foaming, shampoo that is very powerful. It’s designed to break down dirt and grime and lift it to the surface making extraction much easier. Now it’s time to scrub and sanitize the carpet and we will show that process below.
One step of this process is to agitate the carpet with the carpet shampoo. We do this by mixing the product deep into the carpet so that all of the carpet fibers are coated with the shampoo. We have learned that this also helps with the cleaning results. Typically, an auto detailer will simply spray the top of the surface, but we like to make sure that all of the surfaces are covered.
We use a VX5000 vapor steamer and it’s by far one of the best on the market today. It has an attachment with a triangle brush head that emits steam, and the firm bristles of the brush do a super job of agitating the surface. The agitation from the brush head, combined with the 320-degree steam, literally melts the dirt, grime, and in this case, protein milkshake, completely away from the carpet fibers.
Our final step is to use our heated carpet extractor. We do this immediately after we steam agitate the carpet. Hot, 210 degrees, water is injected into the carpet surface, and the powerful three-stage vacuum sucks up the water, dirt, and the protein shake stain. We go over the area two or three times with the extractor.
The photo above shows the finished product. Removing the protein milkshake stain correctly uses a combination of steam agitation, carpet shampooing, and hot water extraction. This is a very effective way to remove car interior stains but to sanitize the surface as well. This is the process with all of our interior details, regardless if there is a stain or not. It’s the most effective way to clean car interior carpets. Thank you for reading!