Jazzless Honda Interior Transformation

There's nothing more tragic than a jazzless Honda, so let's try and revive the battered interior of this little Si before it's too far gone. This seven-year-old 90,000 mile supermini belongs to a long-standing customer who, after discovering my progression from simple sponge jockey to internet car cleaning sensation, thought it would be fun to have it featured. What with it being used as an office, cafe and changing room as well as a car, it's always in need of a good clean but to compound matters here, following a recent move it was also chock full of heavy clutter. A good half hour or so off camera thankfully had that all emptied out and semi-organised on the lawn for the owner to pick through though, meaning that I could then get in a little closer with the camera to show you exactly what I was dealing with. Deeply ingrained floor mats and surrounding carpets were in dire need of at least a thorough vacuum following months of unmaintained abuse as was a heavily soiled centre console that was sporting a range of grotty treasures. The seats were visibly stained which would likely mean some wet vacuum which you don't often see me doing so that was something to look forward to. The dash and various should-be-see-through fascias were splattered with a solid year's worth of sneezes and the boot was a completely different sandy ball game altogether, which meant all in all this little Honda had well and truly lost its jazz but having tackled it many times before I was confident that with a fair few hours of hard graft and plenty of effing and blinding off camera it could be made to look habitable again. First things first though and effing and blinding aside, heads up to harrys.com for sponsoring the video and hooking me up with one of their snazzy trial shaving sets which if you like keeping on top of your face as well as your car you might well be interested in. So quality shaving blades can be expensive and inferior ones can easily irritate your skin so Harry's founders Jeff and Andy decided to open a razor factory in Germany and make it their mission to help millions of men regularly shave their face in a close hassle-free yet premium style. Their trial set includes a nice weighted handle with textured rubber grip, a detachable and durable five blade cartridge with travel cover for when you're on the move, some slick foaming aloe shaving gel and if you go to harrys.com slash guru to subscribe a free bottle of shower gel that will have you smelling as fresh as I currently do. At just £3.95 then that little lot represents brilliant value and the fact that Harry's donates one percent of its global sales to men's mental health related non-profit organisations is the icing or shaving foam on the cake. So go to harrys.com slash guru or click the link in the description below to get started with your trial shaving set. So before any cleaning could take place the manky floor mats were whipped out and abandoned until they could be tended to later. While the seats were pulled forward and dropped down to open up the cabin a bit make access a bit easier while working from back to front. Mini Henry was then given a quick pep talk as he was going to have to keep his suction strong for this one before being put to work on the boot with a crevice tool and soft dusting brush to eliminate as much of the loose sand and dirt as possible. This initial part of the interior cleaning process is comparable to an exterior decontamination in that you need to get as much of the loose dirt off and out of the interior fibres and surfaces as possible so that it doesn't interfere with any subsequent stages and with a car this heavily soiled there's no escaping the fact you're going to have to really spend some time thoroughly vacuuming all areas but the benefit of working on a car you've tended to multiple times before over one you haven't is that the dirt shouldn't be too ingrained. Once all areas of the battered boot have been thoroughly vacuumed out then including the bits and bobs underneath the carpet the seat backs were then attacked from the side of the car in much the same manner and although most of the loose debris did come out from these parts with relative ease and without the need for any heavy agitation with a brush, sand being sand and literally getting everywhere it still took me a good hour to fully rid these parts of it. With the back of the car sand and debris free I moved on to the slightly better quality upholstery in the cabin now in preparation for a subsequent deep clean the dirt sitting on the surface of the seats was vacuumed up first making sure to get the crevice tool into all of the tight spots while the grey carpets which for the most part weren't actually too bad were hit in a similar fashion focusing on the exposed areas the floor mats don't cover and underneath the adaptable rear seats to ensure there was no unseen nasties left behind. The upholstery vacuum in the plastic trim also needed to be decontaminated via suction so I added the pneumatic brush tool to the equation and got to work eliminating sand and dust from the Honda's various vents, switches and other hard nooks and crannies. I would be giving the trim a more thorough going over later but again the more loose dirt I could remove here to prevent it interfering the better. Before I kicked Henry to the curb and moved on then I treated the seat backs to a light spruce up with an all-purpose cleaner. While I would be deep cleaning the stained bases I know the backs are never too deeply ingrained so decided to save a bit of time and reserve that for some additional wet vacuum of the dirty floor mats instead. I also gave the hardier Polestar door cards a similar clean as they aren't really wet vacuable so simply sprayed them down with APC, worked it in with a damp general purpose towel then vac them off with the crevice tool and while this may look and sound a bit harsh seems to work well while not inflicting any excessive wear and tear. I plan to simply tend to the plastics and trim with a water-based cleaner dressing later in the day but that wouldn't be suitable for areas like the gear knob and steering wheel which were pretty grubby so while I still had the all-purpose cleaner to hand treated them to a decent standalone clean working it in with both a stiff bristle brush and a towel to rid them of any ingrained hand crud knowing that once these bits were done I could concentrate on the cleaner dressing technique for the rest of the hard surfaces afterwards. So after a quick picnic on the lawn I geared up for some wet vacuum with the Bissell SpotClean Pro which has replaced the more bulky pneumatic George I rarely used and although I generally prefer to use an upholstery cleaner than I'm familiar with still had a big bottle of the Bissell brand stuff to get through so thought I'd give it a go. Before bisselling the seats they were first pre-treated with the same all-purpose cleaner used earlier to provide a little extra bite. Now I didn't agitate it with a brush here as the seats weren't that stained and they've already been hit so many times I don't want to cause unnecessary wear however there is a little stiff bristle brush on the backside of the extraction nozzle that can be used to work cleaning solution into stubborn spots if needs be. I don't do a great deal of wet vacuum these days as most of the cars I clean off camera only need general maintenance work but it's good to have something like this to hand for the few manky cars I do take on. Now it might not be the most suitable machine if you're shampooing interiors from top to bottom all day every day but it suits my needs and funnily enough since I got it a fair few people have messaged me or left comments saying that I should look into one so they're obviously a fairly popular choice. While you can wet vac using just clean water following a separate chemical application and agitation which technically leaves less product residue in the material I just stuck with the standard method here injecting the Bissell formula and extracting it until the vast majority of visible dirt had been sucked up. It's also worth mentioning that the nature of wet vacuum means you'll almost certainly get over spray on surrounding plastics and trim which is generally the reason I'll hold off tending to them until after this potentially messy part of the process. The only real downside of doing that is that you might get a damp backside during subsequent stages but you can always throw a plush towel down to avoid that. With the seats wet vac'd to what I'd call an acceptable standard then I moved on to the floor mats which would give the cabin a bit of time to dry out before I needed to hop back in. Once again I grabbed Henry and the crevice tool to quickly vac off most of the loose sand and dirt from each of the mats as I'm not a huge fan of beating their backsides and scattering dirt sand and dust everywhere. I then used a pressure sprayer filled with the same diluted all-purpose cleaner used during the previous stages to generously soak them. Once treated I grabbed a compact Dremel Versa tool complete with stiff brush attachment to be used for some motorised agitation. Now while I know cordless drills are generally the go-to for applications like this nowadays just thought this might represent a handy alternative. It's rotary action, single speed and as you can see certainly works better than brushing the cleaner in by hand. However you don't quite get the torque you'd do from a drill so using one would really depend on application and the depth of clean required. I'm always looking for compact cleaning solutions myself though so thought it was at least worth showcasing. The thorough Dremel agitation was then followed up with Abyssal Wet Vac to both extract the all-purpose cleaner that had been worked in and further finesse the fibres with its own carpet cleaning solution. Now while these mats may have seen 90,000 miles worth of abuse and neglect they're relatively decent quality and haven't yet gone past the point of no return so worth spending a bit of time on. Once the mats had been revived and hung out to dry and before moving on to methodically dressing all of the plastics and trim I pre-sprayed a few of the more stubborn areas with the water-based product to allow them to soak in the hope that by the time I'd finished the other parts these would just wipe clean. While it's generally better to spray a dressing product onto a towel or applicator then work it over the surface, cars like this that get neglected for extended periods of time call for direct application in my opinion but so long as you're thoroughly working into all the various nooks and crannies and ensure any excess is taken care of you shouldn't have any issues with a direct slap dash application. After all the plastics and trim had been lightly cleaned and dressed with the water-based protectant then the penultimate part of the revival process was to give the classical clean. Now the exterior wasn't to be tended to today so the outside of the windows would remain dirty but that didn't mean the insides couldn't be done so my usual routine for unkept cars of direct application followed by a lint-free glass cleaning cloth wipe and subsequent general purpose towel buff was followed and again despite being grubby because these windows have been cleaned by my fair hands probably 10 times before remain pretty slick underneath the surface smears and so clean up quite easily compared to glass of this age that's never been properly tended to. The snotty plastic gauge fascias and infotainment screen which were unfortunately already quite heavily scratched were worked over with the plush side of a general purpose towel only to try and prevent inflicting any further marks and once cleaned up were then able to thankfully convey the important information displayed behind them again. Lastly then while poor Henry thought he was done and dusted for the day I called him back into action for one final once over to remove any bits I may have missed or that may have blown in throughout the day and generally to make sure the various surfaces were up to standard and looking early evening aftershot worthy as a 4k video camera with 24 times optical zoom isn't particularly forgiving and neither are the critical eyes of YouTube. So after about eight hours of interior tidying then I finally threw in a towel as I felt the Honda had now reclaimed enough of its jazz. So the previously manky and exhausted looking floor mats came up quite well following their multi-stage clean which was good as they're only ever usually treated to a superficial one and the seats while still a bit damp now looked stain free although this was their first wet vac in seven years so don't hold me to that. The biohazard centre console while still worn was now somewhere you wouldn't be too scared to put your drink. The see-through surfaces were clean crisp and splatter free and their surrounding previously sticky buttons were just about safe to touch again. Now it's always hard for me to gauge the true level of transformation after staring at the same surfaces for hours on end but I'm sure for both the owner and most of those watching this represented a satisfactory turnaround. Yes it will inevitably get beaten up again soon but you have to give the owner props for at least hiring the right man for the job when it does. So as always thanks for stopping by hopefully the Henry Bissell and Dremel driveway convention was worth your time. I'm off to rest my forearms for a bit but will of course be back with something else once they've recovered.