Beauty on the Inside

By Kian Amirkhizi & Doug Snow

Interior cleaning is both an Art and a Science.  And, the process is always full of surprises.  There are many different types of surfaces to clean up or problems you may have to fix. But, one way or another there is almost always leather or vinyl, or both, to care for.

Peeling Dashboards

Perhaps your dashboard has come down with a terrible form of vinyl leprosy. The now infamous “peeling dashboards” have become a real issue for technicians and cleaning specialist across the nation. This is a condition where a water-based coating is sprayed over the top of a vinyl dashboard. Over time, this coating has had a tendency to bubble and then flake off.

There is no remedy for this situation other than re-coating. Do not attempt to clean this. Inform your customer or seek professional assistance from an interior restoration specialist. The precursor to the flaking is bubbling, so be very careful when cleaning certain vehicles that have this problem. If you try to clean a dash with the bubbles on them you chance popping the bubble and further damaging the dashboard, so be careful.

This coating starts to fail around the areas that come in contact with humans. (We are always ruining things-aren’t we.) Afterwards, applications of silicone based protection solutions can cause further delaminating. Center consoles have similar coatings and issues, since abrasive contact with hands are commonplace.

Poor Quality Leather

In the leather industry, surprisingly enough, manufacturers have found a way to dramatically cut costs when producing leather seating materials. Unfortunately, reducing costs means a marked reduction in quality and longevity to the customer.

This leather is what is known as heat laminated splits, (with furniture leather it is similar to Bycast leather) or polyurethane foil leather. For some time interior technicians have noticed that certain cars have a markedly inferior quality of leather that visibly appears to literally fall apart. When new, the leather looks like an ordinary piece of leather. However, in this case, beauty is only skin deep or as thick as the polyurethane foil coating on top of it.

The Process of Making Leather

When most people think of leather, they imagine the skin is taken from the cow and somehow magically transformed into leather. That’s partly true, but let’s take a deeper look to clarify things a bit more. For the sake of brevity, we might be guilty of oversimplification.

In the process of making leather, the skin is split into several layers. The top layer or outer layer is the most valuable as it has the best durability and flexibility. The bottom split is the worst and as you might have guessed — this is the guilty layer that is causing all the problems.

The bottom split is processed similar to all other types of leather except that a polyurethane foil is placed on top of the leather. This foil can only temporally mask the inferior nature of this leather. Within time the leather literally disintegrates. If you are a cleaning professional and you come across this type of leather, no amount of fussing, preening, conditioning or primping is going to make this last or correct the underlying structural issue with this leather. Our suggestion is to avoid messing with this leather, inform the customer and move on.

Dye Transfer from Blue Jeans & Leather Belts

Dye transfer is a fairly common condition on modern leather where it becomes stained due to contact with other materials that transfer their dye onto the surface of the leather. It is most often seen on lighter colored leathers and usually the culprit is blue jeans.

Removal is going to require specialized chemicals. Leather Master makes a product called Strong Remover. It has powerful solvents that can remove the top coat if not extremely careful. Check with your own supplier for their suggestions. Just don’t use wheel degreaser!

Rubber Tire Marks on Leather

Sometimes our beloved and brilliant customers find it necessary to throw a tire into their back seat. Like when they dress them up to look like people so they can use the carpool lane. Unfortunately for their automobile, this usually causes some problems. One of which, the car will not roll with only three wheels. Aside from that, tires have a chemical that when in contact with a seat cushion will migrate to and through the leather. The chemical being migratory in nature causes many issues for cleaners and

interior restoration technicians. You may try cleaning the stain off but be aware that the same troubling dark spot may be back again. Inform your customers about the issues related to such a stain. It’s always a good idea to qualify the customer’s expectations and temper them with a discussion on realistic expectations. Many times even experienced interior restoration technicians will find this situation problematic and prone to having to make a return trip for an additional re-coat.

Ink Marks

We have written a previous article about ink removal and the troubles that can occur. I highly recommend doing some digging on the America’s Car Care Business Web site for that article. If ink stains are addressed quickly, there’s a great chance in removing all of the stain. However, there are going to be times that removal of the ink stain is not possible and the only remedy is concealing the ink stain by “re-coloring” with a flexible coating designed for that particular substrate.

Vinyl upholstery materials that are stained with ink have a very short time frame of removal success. Most all ink stains on vinyl (unless removed immediately) are going to require re-coating as ink that remains on vinyl substrates is usually indelible within a timeframe of a few days.

If re-coating vinyl, we recommend using a solvent-based coating and when re-coating leather we recommend water-based coatings.

Suntan Lotion on Leather

There are times that you may have been asked to remove a yellowish haze from the driver’s seat area that seems to be located just about where the legs would come in contact with the seating panels if someone were wearing shorts. Now maybe people back East don’t wear shorts that often, but in Southern California shorts are the mandatory uniform (even during December), so this problem is quite common where we live.

It usually appears as a dirty-brown or yellow haziness that looks like it just needs to be cleaned off. In fact that’s probably what the owner of the car is going to ask you to do. And then when you fail miserably at the requested task, the said owner will then proceed to blabber to all his friends at the water cooler that “so and so” can’t fix leather. So the moral of the story is don’t be a “so and so.”

In our experience, most of the time, we see this on expensive German cars with lighter colored leather. (But then again, doesn’t almost everyone in Los Angeles drive a BMW?) We also see this same phenomenon on armrests and steering wheels.

Summary

Some issues are best avoided altogether and some can be treated successfully with a bit of knowledge combined with the right chemicals. Learning when to avoid a nightmarish situation can mean a big difference in the profitability of the day. Informing the customer ahead of time reduces your liability and tempers the problems that might be encountered. Learning about a situation after the “that can’t be cleaned by normal methods” is a costly one that should be avoided.

Kian Amirkhizi & Doug Snow are the founders, primary instructors and owners of MATRI-X, a company that provides professional training and supply for the repair and restoration of leather, vinyl, plastic and velour. Both Amirkhizi and Snow are nationally recognized experts in these disciplines, and have won several national awards. Both continue to operate their own successful restoration/repair businesses in the Los Angeles area.

Your feedback is welcomed, so please do not hesitate to contact them with comments regarding this article at MATRI-X at 888.207.6007. For more information on product suggestions, please contact them online at www.reconsupplies.com.

Join us.  Be a member.  Leave a comment today!

At www.carcarebuzz.com we would like to know what you think.