The truck we recently purchased was a work truck and it looked like it inside. Today, you can not even tell how bad it was. The carpet was nearly black with motor oil in most places. It was filthy. Clint said he'd pull it out and replace it with new if I didn't want to bother with cleaning it. As a mother with seven rough and tumble children and one hard working man, I have tackled my fair share of stains so I saw this carpet as a challenge!
I wish I had taken some before pictures because the results are truly amazing!!!
Rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) took the light and the very heavy oil stains out of the truck carpet very easily. In the second picture, the entire area was the dark color you see at the top. A little more elbow grease and alcohol took care of the rest of it. The carpet looks very close to new in that spot now.
For the lighter stains, I poured the alcohol on a cloth and just rubbed/blotted.
For the many, many, many heavier stains, I just poured the alcohol on heavy and blotted it up. The center console area of the carpet to the right of the 4WD stick looked like they had poured dirty motor oil onto it. It was BLACK and sticky to the touch.
See the yellow stains left? As the alcohol evaporated and pulled more oil to the surface, I had to keep blotting/rubbing. After it dried, that yellowish staining was left. Applying the alcohol to the cloth removed the rest.
This technique also removed some stubborn coffee staining in another vehicle. I had steam cleaned it and the yellow color kept coming up to the surface as the area dried. It has worked on almost every stain I have tried it on so far.
Do not get the alcohol on the molded plastic door panels; it will leave stain marks. Use the tips in our blog at your own risk.
Jake,the former owner, if you are seeing this, you probably don't recognize the truck!
