Hi folks,

Some of you may have seen my recent posts about a leak in my 500. Long story short, water leaked via the bumper into my internal back carpets. This part is now sorted but due to the damp, my seats now have staining and what looks like mold/mildew along the back seats.

I left it in for a clean & shampoo this morning and the guys did a great job getting the general water staining out. However, they ended up not charging me for the back seat as the mold/mildew type stains won't come out.

Any thoughts on how to clean these up? They tried 3 different cleaning solutions (think they use autoglym) I'd hate to be left with this staining forever.

designlady said:

Any thoughts on how to clean these up? They tried 3 different cleaning solutions (think they use autoglym) I'd hate to be left with this staining forever.

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Never had the problem thank goodness but if you google "remove mildew stains from upholstery" it comes back with many suggestions. How many are safe or practical for car upholstery is another question...

If it won't come out and you don't want to live with it, you could likely purchase a secondhand rear seat for perhaps less than you might think.

It's only a few minutes easy work to remove the rear seat.

This happened to me with my VW T25 about 5 years ago, caused by damp and lack of use rather than a leak. I tried every detergent known to man with no success, then everything from a my steam cleaner to a mild bleach solution (not enough to bleach the fabric) and then believe it or not I took the seat out to the back garden in the summer and used a pressure washer on the fabric. I didn't cause further damage to the fabric but the stains remained - no joy with anything - the actual mildew itself would have come out but the stains they caused were irreversible damage and were something else, and permanent I'm afraid.

I'd also recommend a replacement seat (the easiest but not cheapest) - just search on ebay for Fiat 500s under £3000 and there are about 10,000 cars currently being broken, all the colours of the rainbow. Go for leather and you'll never have to worry about it again!

You can buy a rear seat for about £30 on eBay. They often come up

I agree it would likely need a new seat, but we used to get 99% of difficult stains out of fabrics using traffic film remover
its meant for removing traffic film, grease from engine bays etc, i even used to use it neat to unblock oil pick up pipes on Ford CVH engines
its highly caustic so you will need to rinse well and draw all the residues out with a wet and dry vac
if that wont work, nothing will