Removing stains from vinyl seats

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Alan H. Tast
Posts: 4214
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2003 10:52 pm
Location: Omaha, NE

Removing stains from vinyl seats

Post by Alan H. Tast »

To say I'm mad is an understatement. I had the Sports Roadster at a Father's Day car show in my home town outside of Omaha. Some (expletive deleted) person placed a colored-paper show flyer on the driver's seat. Normally this wouldn't be a big thing, but the flyer got placed in the car (with the top down - long story) while I was at the awards presentation. During the presentation there was a brief, heavy rain shower - when I got back to the car there was a sheet of purple-colored paper on the seat, and the dye from the paper leached out and stained my NOS Pearl Beige vinyl seat cover! Thankfully I had a "Magic Eraser" knock-off, "Bleche-White" tire cleaner and some other vinyl cleaners with me. I then went to my mother's house and dug out Brillo pads, Clorox bleach and whatever else I could find to try to get the staining out. I was able to get most of the color off, but there still is some faint purple staining of the seat cover. Any suggestions on what to use to get the rest of the staining out short of dying the seat?

Oh, the lesson of this story for me is NEVER let people place colored-paper flyers on your seats at a car show - and check your car often to pull the flyers out before they get a chance to get wet. The top thing-again, that's another story.
Alan H. Tast, AIA
Technical Director/Past President,
Vintage Thunderbird Club Int'l.
Author, "Thunderbird 1955-1966" & "Thunderbird 50 Years"
1963 Hardtop & 1963 Sports Roadster
Joe Johnston
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Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 3:34 pm
Location: Sunny FLORIDA

Re: Removing stains from vinyl seats

Post by Joe Johnston »

Hopefully it will fade away in time. Perhaps park in the sun and see if that helps?? Not much advice, but it seems as though you have done all the logical things to remove the stain.
PLEASE invest a few bucks and buy all the shop manuals for your car. Definitely will save you much time and be an education.

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jatkinson
Posts: 42
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2016 4:33 pm

Re: Removing stains from vinyl seats

Post by jatkinson »

Did you try tooth paste? Sometimes it will work. Get the kind with the whiting bleach stuff in it...
1956 T-Bird Sage Green
1970 Mustang Mach 1
2004 T-Bird Platinum Silver
1928 Model A Tudor
2018 Mustang GT Orange Furry
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