Remove child car seat impressions from the seat’s upholstery.
I’m not sure if your post is an order for some or all of us to come to your house and remove those impressions from the upholstery, or if your post is actually a question!
In any event, please tell us–
Vinyl upholstery?
Cloth upholstery?
Leather upholstery?
Length of time that the child seat was in place on that seat?
Don’t tell me what to do. And I don’t even have car seats anymore.
Sorry I did not know I was on Jeopardy. How can I get the child car seat impressions out of my Cloth upholstery? Length of time about five months.
They may go away with time. If they don’t, and it’s a big deal to you, you may need to replace the seat buns to get rid of them. In my opinion, replacing the seat buns would be too expensive to justify just to solve a problem like this, which is easily ignored.
Cloth is much more forgiving than leather. I had the same situation when we sold our cloth seated car and with a little bit of vacuuming and shampooing (which loosens the material) the impressions were gone after 3-4 days. Same with a 2nd car I had owned for 3 months. A good cleaning and vacuuming plus 2-3 days of wait took care of it.
I don’t even want to know how this will look like for the leather seats of our current car. I am very diligent about strapping the seats in really good (less than an inch of wiggle room even if you try hard to move the seat). But the leather must be much more unforgiving than the cloth.
Does that help?
What kind or brand of shampoo did you use?
I admit I was lazy and just gave the guys at my car wash 50 bucks for an interior detail with shampooing instead of bothering myself.
They used a carpet or upholstery shampoo. They just scrub it into the seats and vacuum it out with a wet vacuum. I imagine this would work quite well with something like the Rug Doctor and its upholstery attachment that you can rent in grocery stores some places. But as I said renting that also costs money so I opted for the car wash. Not sure, if money is tight, maybe you can just get some upholstery cleaner at a store and use a household vacuum.
Thanks for all of the info. This has been very helpful. I will check the auto section at Wal-Mart and see what they may have for upholstery shampoo’s and go from there. I already tried the warm water and vinegar with no success. But it works great to take the impressions out of carpets in the car or home. Have you every heard of using peroxide to take out the red and orange stains from soda drinks and the like? Some one said it works awesome. Thank goodness I have not had to deal with that. But it may have been an easier fix than my seat impressions. Thanks again!
Also: With impression do you mean staining/discoloration or more like grooving in the cloth because the seat was pressing into it for too long?
The kind of impressions or grooving in the cloth from the friction of the carseat against it. Besides the pressure of the seat belt we have the auto’s movement along with the childs movement.
I think if it’s rubbed or scratched there is not much you can do but the impression should “decompress” within a few days. I think the shampooing may help it loosen up a little and accelerate the process. It may not be perfect but good enough. I remember us having the same worry with two cars and in the end we were able to sell them with nobody ever complaining.
This trick is often recommended to remove impressions from long-standing furniture in home carpets. It might work for cloth car seats…place an icecube in the impression and let it slowly melt. Then, go over the spot with a vacuum.
Here is the crazy part. The child car seats have been out for over a year and a half. They were only in the auto for five months tops. But going to try the shampoo and I have one of those steam machine thingy’s that I bought and still have not even gotten out of the box. If that does not work I am not going to worry about it like you say. I will have atleast given it my best shots. Other wise the inside is near new condition. Another crazy thing is I bought it used for my oldest. I looked around in the front and never checked the back they may have been there when I bought it. It was a Stress purchase. Meaning we were both under a lot ot stress at the time. But anyway thanks will let you know how it turns out.
You may not be able to.
Materials, particularly elastomers and foams, will if forced into a shape for an extended period actually begin to take the new shape. The concept is called “cold flow”. The foam is not the same shape it was when new, it has now “flowed” into the new shape, just as a soft crayon in a cup would take the shape of the cup.
Try this:
Put a couple of two-by-fours across the seat with the indents, and pile some very heavy things on top - concrete blocks, bodybuilder weights, etc. Try to arrange them so they don’t touch the seat back, so that all of the weight presses on the seat cushion.
The idea is get the weight to stretch the foam underneath in ways that extend it sideways and cause the center to rise a bit. Pouring hot water in the seat grooves just before you add the weight may also help.