Removing coolant (antifreeze) from carpet.

[Huw Powell]

> How do you remove coolant (antifreeze) from the interior carpet? It's been  a 
> real project replacing the heater core in my '88 80Q

As a few people have hinted at, "dilution is the key to pollution."

You either want to pop out your front seat and lift the rear bench, cut 
the carpet ahead of the center console, and take it out, soak it with 
water & cleansers, dry it and replace - on top of freshly cut felt or 
carpet underlay;

Or, if that intimidates you, keep adding H2O and soaking up the residue 
with blotting materials.  Which, really, is a lot more work and less 
effective.

In this file:

http://www.humanspeakers.com/audi/stereo-90.htm

you will see that I "kind of" did that, mostly to lay new wiring and 
swap my interior.  But in the meantime I also washed the carpet and 
installed new synthetic foam padding under it.

Time to remove front seats: 15-45 minutes (power versus manual)

Time to slice carpet ahead of console: 5 minutes

Remove rear bench: 5 minutes

Wrestle carpet out: 20-30 minutes

Remove soaked, cruddy felt: 20 min.

Clean out floor pan: 30 min.

Cut new foam/felt to fit: 60 min.

Replace all parts after cleaning, another few minutes.

This adds up to one "long day" spread out over several days, and 
absolutely removes the coolant from your car.

Pretending that adding water and letting it evaporate will take all 
summer and not succeed.  Coolant, by its nature, will not "dry out" and 
evaporate from your car.

Knuckle down, do it right once, and it will be done and over with.

-- 
Huw Powell

http://www.humanspeakers.com/audi

http://www.humanthoughts.org/