Cleaning soft-top

Big Chris

Big Chris

Big Chris

Soldato
Joined
5 Apr 2004
Posts
5,461
Location
Bloxham
I foolishly remarked how dirty my Old Dear's car was over the weekend and she's now charged me with the task of cleaning it.

It's a Renault Mégane convertible, very much like this:



How do I best go about cleaning the fabric roof? Will it require special bits and bobs or can I just sponge and car-shampoo it?
 
My wife's 306 cab had a very dirty roof (previous owner must have parked it under a tree all the time). Try as I might with these roof cleaners it wouldn't shift the tree sap stains.

Only thing that did was the pressure washer ironically. Blasting it with that removed the deep ingrained tree bark and sap stains and made it look like new. Sadly the cat has taken to sleeping on it so it's covered in cat hair but he blends in well as a black cat on a black roof!
 
You want to use the correct stuff. Autoglym do a 2 step cleaner and protector. It's worth doing right because if it isn't protected then it will leak, perish from UV light in the summer, and then be susceptible to green growth in the winter!
 
Use soap and a nail brush or similar first then something like Renovo then finally 303 aerospace protectant to bring it back to black and protect from UV.
 
NathanE said:
You want to use the correct stuff. Autoglym do a 2 step cleaner and protector. It's worth doing right because if it isn't protected then it will leak, perish from UV light in the summer, and then be susceptible to green growth in the winter!
Click to expand...


Seconded

Did my roof with the AG kit at the weekend.
 
Soft Brush, the correct cleaner as mentioned above. For sealant the 303 stuff is supposed to be the dogs. I plan to do this myself:

Rinse Off
Soft Brush + Shampoo
Rinse again
303 applied with sponge
Excess wiped off with clean side of sponge
Let it dry
Return to wipe of any remaining excess

No pressure washing!

Is it vinyl or not? I think this makes a difference on product selection.
 
That's what I did.

Gave the soft top a really good hose down (just mains hose pipe pressure, nothing fancy).
Then used the 303 shampoo with a yellow sponge. This stuff behaved identically to the Autoglym one I've used before. It turns into a lather so you can really give the hood a good clean.

Then rinsed off. And finished washing the rest of the car.

Dried car and soft top.

Squirted on the 303 protector/conditioner stuff. Used a dry sponge to spread it around evenly. Use copious amounts of this stuff. Probably 1/4 of the bottle to be honest.

The 303 stuff seems to be identical to the Autoglym. I've noticed no difference in the way the products work when applying them nor any difference in water repellancy.
 
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