Morris Minor Owners Club

How do you clean off 30+ years of grime from vinyl seats. auto glymm takes of some but there still black not blue. Help??

I tried Jif (without bleach) when I first had Phyllis and it worked well - have to get the residue off of course, but that's easily done. I replaced the interior after a couple of months, however, do I don't know if it would cause any long-term problems.

You could just keep trying the auto glym, reappplying where needed. Oh - washing-up liquid is a very effective degreaser, which could be of some use...

washing-up liquid is a very effective degreaser

Its also quite acidic which could cause problems.............

I used Mr Muscle Orange. I worked quite well, in fact you could see the grime run off when sprayed on the door cards before touching them! I don't know if it's the best stuff available but it seemed to work OK.

Didn't know it was acidic, Matt! I knew there was salt in it, which is A Bad Thing, of course, but as for a high acid content...

Im pretty sure its acidic!! when the salts are in a solution (ie. in water) they ionise in to its componants, and if part of the salt is hydrogen (like table salt etc) H+ ions are formed, which is the componant of an acid.....

Hi, Matt, Gareth,

Washing up liquid will not be very acidic - the short reason is that if it were stongly acidic, the bottles would have to be labelled with the hazard signs! That's a real marketing no no.

Most cosmetic/haousehold products will aim to have a pH (measure of acidity) around 4 - 8 (7 is theoretically neutral). This has the benefit that it's not going to affect the customers skin.

Matt - you're quite right in that the salts will contain H+ ions - however, they also contain the -ve ions as well. It's the proportion of H+ ions that makes a solution acidic. the measure (i.e. pH) is "the negative logarithm (base 10) of the hydrogen ion concentration" - in practice values of 0-3 are strongly acidic, values 9-14 highly alkaline (caustic), with the range 4-8 sort of intermediate. If you take highly pruified water it should have a pH of 7, but it rapidly dissolves the carbon dioxide from the air, and ends up about 5 ish.... Because the scale is logarithmetic the readings are useful, but need a careful interpretation.

Sorry for the long(ish) waffle,

Colin

the negative logarithm (base 10) of the hydrogen ion concentration"

I dont think Matt realised that the board had its own Chemist.

Another good cleaner if its still available was made by Decorsil and was designed for viynl seats there must be a modern equivalent as there is still plenty of vinyl furniture around.

I took everything out of Minerva and used Tesco's all surface cleaner, a soft scouring pad and the shower cubicle in my old flat! Came up beautifully clean (obviously not like new as 35 years will have their effects) and then after all that hard work lost it all in the fire (Not my fault)

I dont think Matt realised that the board had its own Chemist

Im doing Chemical Engineering..... A reasonable amount of chem, and we did pH = - log conc H+ ions at A level....

Chemical Engineering

You will have to pardon my non Uni education and ignorance on these matters but when I was still in engineering we never had any chemist shops in the factories

Designing big huge chemical plants is the basic idea......... fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, chemistry (including quantum mechanicy stuff), biochemistry etc, unfortunately its all theory.....

unfortunately its all theory.....

Hmm interesting good job Moggies were made using practical enginering and not using theoretical engineering then.

That meant to mean i'm thick? ;)

I would prefer to do some practical engineering, maybe there will be an elective in later years.....

That meant to mean i'm thick?

I wouldnt go that far, just that I prefer reality to theory, well thats the theory anyway

That's the reality of it too!

trust me, I know the theory is generally rubbish, it why people should always over engineer........

There's nothing wrong with theory if it's correct theory!!

There's nothing wrong with theory if it's correct theory!!

Correct theory is not always right.......... the correct model could be not very good!

Moggies were made using practical enginering and not using theoretical engineering then.

Practical engineering requires a sound basis of theory, but I think I know what you meant.
There's nowt worse than someone with theory knowledge but no idea how to use it in a practical way, and even less idea how to guesstimate whether they are completely wrong or not ( but you do come across a lot of them).
I try and get my guys to cross check their theory with a real result before committing themselves on a design and this tends to wake them up to the real world.
I still trust a rough bench test more than a PC result but when you can get both to agree then the risk is low.