The seats of your car take a lot of abuse. They get scratched, spilled on, soaked, covered in mud, filled with dog fur, and more. There are home remedies and professional car detailing to help out with a lot of these issues. Unfortunately, there is one hazard for a car seat that is much more challenging to repair: a burn hole.
This is most commonly associated with individuals who smoke, however a burn can occur from other items as well. For spills, your standard blotting and washing works for virtually all types of car seats. For burn holes, you really need to focus on what type of material your car seats are made out of, as this will affect your approach for repairing.
Vinyl Upholstery
If you have vinyl upholstery, you’re in luck. It is one of the easier materials to fix if a burn hole occurs. While you might not find a “home remedy” for this one, you can easily find a vinyl car seat repair kit. The kit will typically include a liquid patch that will bond with the rest of the vinyl material.
Fabric Upholstery
There are a couple options for repairing fabric upholstery and they are both fairly easy. For older fabric that is weaved, you have to option to reweave it. You would simply trim the edges of the damaged threads then reweave a similar type thread through the damaged area, knotting it at the ends so it stays.
You can also glue a small patch over the hole. For this option you would use a razor blade to scrape the surface until you collected some fibers that can be used to glue onto the affected area.
Leather Upholstery
Now is the time for some bad news. If you’ve burned a hole on your leather car seats, the DIY efforts might not be worth the trouble or might even cause more damage. If you are an accomplished leather worker, you can probably manager yourself but for the rest of us, it is best to bring it to a professional. You have the potential to cause greater damage to your leather seats if you screw up trying to fix the burn hole.
For more information about protecting the seats of your car, visit our website or call us at 888-246-5653.