Wet, Soapy Carpet, New Car -- Need Advice!!

[CBLW]

SO. I spilled some soap in my carpet (driver's side between the bottom of the accelerator and the little plastic pad embedded in the floor). It's just hand soap that I was using to clean the accelerator, but dear GOD has it created a mess. It made that spot on the carpet look terrible (all clumped up and gross). I've tried everything to get it out: Tuff Stuff, Blue Coral, vacuuming, you name it. Adding the cleaners only made the situation worse because they added MORE soap, and I ended up pushing all of the soap around and covering more of the carpet with it.

Well, I ended up taking my car into a detailing shop to get an opinion on what to do (mainly because I wanted to fix the ugly spot and get it back to looking like the rest of the carpet). The guy there told me to douse the area in as much hot water as possible and try to blot all the soap out.

I spent all day yesterday doing that. 4 hours. It’s absolutely impossible to remove all of the soap from the carpet. I got a LOT out, and I’ve managed to make the carpet look substantially better now (so long as all the threads are pushed the right way), but I’m concerned.

What should I do about the fact that there is still soap in the carpet? Just live with it? What about possible damage to the area of the carpet I was scrubbing? I want to get everything back to looking great. Does anyone have any idea how I should handle this, or what I should do to find a permanent fix?

I’m in the D.C. area…

Thanks!

[Nick Chapman]

Re: Wet, Soapy Carpet, New Car -- Need Advice!!

Find someone with an extractor, or just a regular carpet shampooer with an upolstery wand, and keep rinsing/sucking that spot out until the soap is gone. Don't mix any chemicals in with the rinse water.

Or...if you have a shop vac, get a spray bottle of straight water. Soak the infected spot, and use your shop vac to extract the water out, soak, extract, soak, extract, etc... After a few passes, it should remove all of the soap residue.

Do not add anymore chemicals to the area. Use water, you need to rinse it out!

Nick

[Ryan L.]

Re: Wet, Soapy Carpet, New Car -- Need Advice!!

Car Carpet Cleaning Help Needed!

You should probably continue your posting in that thread so people can get the full story and see what people have already told you to do.

Ryan

[J. A. Michaels]

Re: Wet, Soapy Carpet, New Car -- Need Advice!!

Rinse extract, rinse extract, that's about all you can do. I know its not the way you planned on spending your Sunday.

[Markus Kleis]

Re: Wet, Soapy Carpet, New Car -- Need Advice!!

Get a Bissel Little Green Cleaning Machine. I LOVE mine...so useful and cheap (Sub $100).