Stripping down the Interior

The first stage is to strip down the interior, removing carpets, seats, headlining, door panels and plastic trim. There are two reasons for this, firstly it allows us to assess what is damaged beyond repair and what needs to be replaced, it's not always obvious at first glance. Some of the plastic trim such as handles, and gromits, cleaned up easily while other parts were stained. Only by testing were we able to tell, then we could put in an order for replacement parts.

The second reason for dismantling much of the car is for access, (It's easier to valet the interior while it's exterior, meanwhile the interior can be valeted as if it were an exterior, confused yet?). As you can see from the photo above, soot from the fire had found it's way behind all the panels and this needs to be removed and the panels treated in order to remove the smell.

Having made an inventory of all the parts, the work can begin on the clean-up. In the above photo, Andrew begins by vacuuming the seats to remove the soot and ash. It is important to do this thoroughly before shampooing the seats because it's easier to to do this when it's dry.

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