upholstry care?
 

What are yall using to keep your seats soft? Mine are sun dried and Id like to get them soft again.

I use Meguiar's No. 57 cleaner/conditioner.

Last year I first went over the interior with Mr. Clean magic erasers, and could not believe how all my vinyl brightened up.

Yep...i'll second what Z202 said.

somone also advised me to use spray silicon? HAve ya'll ever heard of that?

There is a couple of other products i've used that seem to do a good job.

Spray Nine's Marine "Once Over" is a vinyl cleaner/ protectant.

Starbrite's "Waterproofing with PTEF" also does an excellent job of moisturizing and protecting. This stuff also works very well on Sunbrella and it's about $20 for a 22oz bottle. If i remember correctly (age allows me to forget a few things so i could be wrong here) Silicone products and Sunbrella didn't work well together.

Scotty
 

Do Not use heavily based Silicone products on your upholstery!!!
Over time products that are heavy in silcone will rob any type of vinyl or Leather upholstery of it's suppleness(leave upholstery dry and weathered) and eventually it will start to crack.
Mequiars and 3M make some good products for your application.

Good Luck

thanks scotty

3M Marine Vinyl Cleaner & Restorer
 

My 'new' 96 Shabah dash was really, really sun-blasted. I was thinking uh-oh, vinyl paint or something drastic. Spent a couple of hours doing all the vinyl with 3M's stuff - wow! I'll get an "after" pic to go with this "before" pic - it did a great job on the dash.
My wise dad swears by The Tannery for boat vinyl FWIW.

Dr. Dunn, what exactly did you use on your dash? Mine is blue and has some sun spottting. A few coats of Armor All brought it back to life but I have heard that you should not use AA on the dash. Anyone else been told that?

Dash stuff
 

I used 3M Marine Vinyl Cleaner & Restorer. Had to soak the sun-blasted spots pretty well, but it looked great when done. I suspect a 2nd treatment will work.

I've been told that Armor-All contains petroleum distillates and (per the comments on silicon) sucks vinyl dry over time. Don't know that for a fact.

Once I'm satisfied with the restoration, I'm going to treat the seats & dash with 303 Aerospace. My experience is that nothing else comes for long-term sun protection.

I'd try and clean it off and use something more suitable for a marine environment. I've heard there's some chemicals that don't react well with marine grade vinyl and over time can speed up deterioration. I've always been a firm believer in Meguiars, as well as 3M's products, they both make Marine Vinyl Cleaners, Conditioners & Protectors. I've heard a lot of good things about 303 as well.

I only used the Armor all on the dash, never the seats. I will look into the meguiars for the vinyl cleaning. My upholstery guy recommended the 303 products, I think you can pick those up at Checker or most other auto part stores.

Followup on the 3M Marine stuff: thumbs way up
 

I promise to post a follow-up pic (wife has the camera today). As I noted earlier, the dash on my new used 180 was really sun-beat, and I worked it over heavily with the aforesaid 3M Marine Vinyl stuff. Finally got to see the results today (@2 weeks later.) I'm very pleased. There are no more of the chalk-white spots visible in the 'before' pix. It's got a good gleam and feels pliant. The upholstery was in (relatively) better shape but the stuff seems to have helped it as well. If I have a 'nit' - i was hoping the seats would come up a bit brighter/whiter. (I know the orig. color is off-white.) Any suggestions?
Points for 3M on this stuff, I really thought it would be a much harder problem to solve.

Update: restored dash results
 

(see my earlier post for 'before' pix)
2 shots of dash after a heavy-handed treatment with the 3M marine vinyl stuff. I though it was going to be a rip-and-redo job when i first got the boat - never would have expected this kind of restoration. (queue heavenly choir, buy MMM stock...)

Looks great! I used the Meguiars 57 on my dash and it also looks almost as good as new. Now if I could only get the door to my ski locker cleaned, I have tried everything I could think of on that with no luck.

Mr. Clean magic eraser on the ski locker. It'll come out showroom new. :wink_thumbup: