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E46 carpets, machine washable???

Scania

Scania

Scania

Caporegime
Joined
25 Nov 2004
Posts
26,239
Location
On the road....
The interior of my e46 is down right grotty, I've cleaned up the leather seats and now have the carpets (not mats) to tackle.

I have access to a huge industrial washer that will take the whole of the floor carpet with ease once I've removed it, is this advisable? Or will I end up ruining it by doing this....

Thoughts?
 
Cant you get a more portable cleaner with nossle cleaning? and clean whilst its in the car? how much of a hassle is it to take the carpet out? sounds painful and sounds like it could ruin things...Carpets in cars are not really designed to be pulled up.

Use a portable cleaner with nossle/vac attachment
 
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I destroyed our old washing machine by putting a piece of carpet in it. Don't ask me why I did it.

The machine shook itself to death :D and there was water everywhere. I needed a new machine anyway as it was 9 years old and didn't wash anything very well anyway.

I'm not sure how your industrial washing machine would fare though.
 
Why would you use a washing machine? surely a carpert cleaner (usually has a spray attachment for your liquid and a vac, so it sprays the stuff on, then vacs the water up)

Washing machine just sounds like a recipe for disaster
 
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Removing the seats was plain sailing and I've tried a wet & dry but with limited results, hence this bright idea!

The machine I have access to has a load capacity of 80kg! - it's at a mates workplace, a private hospitals laundry.....
 
Scania said:
Removing the seats was plain sailing and I've tried a wet & dry but with limited results, hence this bright idea!

The machine I have access to has a load capacity of 80kg! - it's at a mates workplace, a private hospitals laundry.....
Click to expand...

You may have a machine that could take it, but whats the chances of ruining the carpet? I wouldnt risk it.
 
I wouldn't recommend it, most likely it'll lose all it's shape and be a nightmare to refit it. Get a wet vac and do it by hand.
 
I can see it going horribly wrong and the carpet ending up shrinking or otherwise becoming mis-shapened.

I wouldn't.
 
I had some grotty car mats, used a carpet cleaning wet vac, had little effect. Ended up using a pressure washer and hanging them to dry, came up like new. It's got to be less likely to put it out of shape than chucking it in a washing machine
 
I've washed the carpet mats many many times without issue, they come out looking like new....

As I say, tried a wet & dry but the result wasn't great....

If it goes Pete tong I could always get a replacement from a breaker I guess, this one could be beyond hope anyway, it's got what looks like marker pen ink dotted all over...
 
You might need to factor in an industrial iron to get the creases out :)

If its stuck down with adheasive foam, how are you going to re-fit the carpet in the car?
 
Pulled up a fair part of it a while back (having removed the front seats) can't say I found any glue holding it down, did find £20 under the carpet on the passenger side which seemed very odd!
 
May be a daft idea but can't you buy a roll of new carpet and use the old one as template? Not sure how much rolls are?
 
Completely misread your OP and thought you meant mats, no, the carpet backing will disintegrate. Hire one of those wet vac things for a day and properly go for it, laundry detergent works well.
 
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