Reviving 50 Year Old Ferrari Floor Mats

While cleaning something as mundane as floor mats wouldn't normally warrant a full video, when the items that you're dealing with have been pulled from a dilapidated Ferrari Dino, exceptions can be made. So keep it locked to see me attempt to revive a ragtag bunch of possibly 50 plus year old fitted floor mats. But until I volunteer my services we're destined for the bin. So although I wasn't planning on delving into a big bag of tatty old Italian floor mats mid-heat wave, thought treating these neglected ones to a sympathetic yet thorough clean with a few familiar products might be of interest. And because they were only going to be used as templates for a fresh set of custom jobbies was basically free to tackle them however I saw fit so long as they didn't fall apart. Although they didn't look or feel particularly high quality or luxurious which did make me wonder. I did pull them from the rusty Ferrari floor pan myself, unfortunately off cameras it was a spare of the moment kind of thing so I had to assume they were the originals which meant they'd be by far the most senior set of mats I'd ever cleaned on camera. Now a few parts of the woven undersides of the mats were sporting some flaky underlay type material that if I was treating them to a proper paid clean for them to be refitted would have begrudgingly picked off in its entirety. But because they were going nowhere near the car and this was just a complimentary job for the sake of some footage, just pulled a few bits of it off instead before vacuuming them over with a soft dusting tool attachment to ensure there was at least nothing loose that could transfer over to the carpeted faces. And speaking of dirt transfer although it might not look like it I had also treated the rubber mat they were sitting on to a fairly thorough vacuum prior to starting although I did finish up on a slightly more practical level to save my ageing back sack and crack although to be honest for the most part I'm still perfectly happy to work on the floor like a hobo whether that be in a small oven-like garage on a private driveway or even a dog poo contaminated pavement. Although it would have been tempting to dive straight into the top side of the mats with a stiff brush and some heavy suction. Suspected the antiquated fibers wouldn't have appreciated that so took advantage of full-size Henry's low suction mode coupled with an open tube vent to help reduce the impact treating them to a thorough vacuum might have as to get them to an acceptable level of clean it had to be done one way or another. And while I do also have the cordless vacs which can be great for ridding things like floor mats of loose dirt, thought the motorized brush head that makes use of might have been too aggressive so just stuck to an every which way crevice tool with an older more worn and rounded item which suited me as I genuinely reckon I'm probably one of the most competent crevice toolers of a continent but regardless of whether I am or not I went ahead and worked my way through the random mix of different mats making use of my me and classic adidas trainer to secure them when needed which you can't really do with a fancy pop-up detailing table or polished worktop proving that there are at least some benefits to being confined to the floor. So once the mats have been thoroughly vacuumed off I went ahead and sprayed them down with what fresh smelling antibacterial g-technic tri-cleaner had to hand before falling back on some 95 diluted built amber surfx hd as while it wasn't a massive amount of unsightly soiling a vacuum alone still wasn't going to be able to sufficiently turn them around but despite needing to be wet down to some extent still didn't want to completely saturate and potentially jeopardize their structural integrity or lack thereof so tried on the fly to sort of strike a balance between applying enough product to make a discernible difference but not so much that the mats might not recover and while in the moment each one was sprayed and subsequently brushed over in turn for the sake of flow and convenient content consumption stitch them all together here. After being sprayed I then treated each mat to a fairly thorough brush initially focusing on the piping around the edges of them which could be easily overlooked as well as the heel pads which inevitably become ingrained with dirt over the years before working the previously applied product into the fibers although a stiff bristled item would have helped separate cac from carpet in more of a no-nonsense fashion would likely also have pulled and dislodged them to an unsightly extent so instead went with a longish bristled item intended for use on soft leather in the hopes any impact brushing them would have would be minimal as much like the vacuuming it had to be done and anything softer likely wouldn't have had adequate mechanical effect and again it was just about trying to find that balance in the moment of doing enough to provide sufficient rejuvenation but not so much that you leave the material looking excessively worn and torn. Spraying and brushing boxed off I then chose to steam extract the mats with the Bissell SpotClean Hydrosteam as I figured if they'd survived a thorough crevice tooling chemical spray down and brush over could probably withstand a steady steam extraction too so cracked on with exactly that partly to further sanitize and add another visual dimension to the clean but also to get rid of any freshly dislodged dirt and product residue in a more effective manner plus with some areas of the old mats being quite heavily creased and distorted thoughts of steaming over might serve to resettle them somewhat even if that did make a smooth professional looking extraction difficult to achieve and while having a machine capable of injecting steam is great it's not absolutely essential just do whatever you can with whatever you have wherever you are but either way once extracted the mats were then quite literally hung out to dry for half an hour so i could then move on to finishing them up with a piping and pad dress so while the upholstered parts of the mats were obviously the main focus it also made sense to spruce up the other bits that ran around the edge and sat in the middle of them with a simple water-based dressing which was worked into either the aging vinyl or leathers grain creases and folds with a flat tire dressing brush and while i'd normally go on to buff freshly dressed surfaces like these over with a microfiber towel following application just to remove any excess product and sheen left it to soak and naturally settle for the most part here as they likely hadn't seen a rejuvenating product like this for many years and although in much the same way dressing tires doesn't directly affect the paintwork this doesn't technically make any difference to the upholstery still think it serves to subtly enhance the overall look so spent far longer than i arguably should have thoroughly brushing the pads and piping of all eight mats over in comparatively chilled fashion to the exhaustive vac agitation and extraction that went before now although you could argue that because these battered old italian mats weren't going back in the expensive rusty shell they came from and were too worn to be flogged on ebay that cleaning them was a complete waste of time i'd argue that outside of enabling some sweaty content to be created the tools products and or process outline could be used as a bit of a reference for anyone else attempting similar and while they still looked a bit disheveled were certainly presentable enough to gather dust on a spares and repairs shelf plus there was no other schmuck offering to give them a good going over meaning fundamentally it was this which is your lot for now i'm afraid or nothing so with that being said if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe for more faffery like this as it does let the faceless algorithm know i'm at least somewhat relevant and in return i'll be back as soon as i realistically can be likely with something exterior and or equipment related instead