How to dry your car seats without using a leaf blower
Maybe the first thing Kurt Browning should have tried was turning on the seat heaters.
Browning reportedly accidentally set fire to his Forest Hill mansion on Wednesday in a disastrous attempt to dry the seats in his convertible Porsche. The car had been left out in the rain with the top down. According to Toronto Fire North Division, someone decided to air them out with help from a leaf blower.
The noisy device was left running unattended in Browning’s garage. It apparently caught fire. The resulting blaze soon engulfed the home.
“It’s easy to dry those seats, depending how much water got in,” says Dewry McLaughlin of Toronto’s Maximum Car Detailing.
First, let’s assume not a lot.
“Start the car up. Turn the seat heaters on. And wait.”
Somewhere, Kurt Browning is giving himself a forehead-slap induced concussion.
Okay, and if it’s a lot?
“Well, it’s no problem to get the (leather) surface dried out. But sometimes the water will get beneath the seat into the foam,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a little like drying your hair. You need to get underneath the top layer.”
In that case, surgery may be required. McLaughlin once took apart the front seats of a Volvo whose sun roof had been left open in the rain. Then the foam “frame” was allowed to drip dry for a week.
Which emphatically will not work if you spill something other than water in your car. Like, say, milk.
“Milk is the craziest thing you want to keep in your car,” says McLaughlin, in the tone of a man who knows from crazy. “We had one lady come in who’d left milk in her car and it spilled. She cleaned the car professionally, but there was still a terrible smell. So we had to do surgery. We took the seat out, cut up the carpet and there was the milk. We had to get rid of (all the foam).”
In bad soakings, mould can seep in, requiring a major replacement of the foam in the seats and under the carpeting. That’s a tear-down job that needs to be done by your dealership.
Bottom line: If the seats are truly soaked, it’s a job best left to professionals.
Just not professional gardeners.
thestar.com |
