Well, I go off to watch a movie with the top down. The weather called for 10% chance of rain.

Come back and it rained, my car is wet (it was a light shower and probably out for 1 hour)

I immediately dry off as much as I can off the seats, console, dash, doors etc.

I ran the car for 30 minutes on heat with AC on windows shut

Leathers seats were bubbled and malformed, so I remembered what a leather expert said and take a hair dryer and on the hottest setting heat the area up evenly and it will shrink back to shape.

So I did that for 30 minutes and behold everything when back to the way it was.

I will be pulling the seats and leaving the car in the sun to dry for a couple days.

Is there something i'm missing?

 

sounds like you got it down...

next time i would do the hair dryer warm, but not hottest-
and you will know in a couple of days whether you got everything or not.

you might want to shampoo the carpets (mats)- let them dry out of the car

 

IIRC the expert said to use a heat gun on a low setting, which is far hotter then a hair dryer on max.

This was a solution for someone when they used his car as a knee placement when cleaning the car, which left a permanent "dimple"

According to the post, leather can withstand a lot of heat, infact the suns heat doesn't damage the leather, it's the UV. This is ALL based on memeory from a post somewhere on here from a guy that works for Townsend.

I have a expensive leather jacket that was water soaked, it did the same thing, but it never went back to normal so I wasn't optimized on the outcome of the seats.

Good timing, since I mail ordered lexol cleaner and lexol conditioner last week and should be here shortly.. I will give it a very good conditioning treatment

I will let you know the outcome in a few days if it changes.

 

our expert is 2002s2k- and he could have said to use high heat...
i was just telling you that i would try warm first.
obviously high heat worked for you, and thats all that really matters.

yup, good timing on the lexol and it is a good product. i still use it sometimes, and i like townsends also.

 

I can't believe I did the same thing---I had my new o6 for a few days and went inside the house. Unfortunately, there was a major cloud burst. Seat, floor, everything was soaked. I removed floor mats, soaked up everything I could with a towel and then put our dehumidifier in the passenger seat. Let it run over night. If I saw fog on the inside of the windows I went through the whole process again. Now, several months later, there is not evidence of my screw up.

Hope this helps anyone in the future that has a similar momentary lapse of reason.

 

question: if you leave your car in the rain with the top down, does that qualify as "flood damage" and if so, that would cause it to be "salvaged" right? i'm not talking about a 30 min sprinkling/misting, but i mean really hard rain. obviously drying out the S is going to be a little easier since there's no roof to begin with, but...i'm curious.

 

I had my MR2 Spyder outside one time with the top down, and sure enough, rain. I did the whole let the heat run thing (kept my window cracked just a LITTLE) for several hours, and it was just fine after.

Is it just me, or is it a rite-of-passage for convertible owners to have their cars rained in at least once?

 

Luckily it hasn't happened to me in my S, yet, but in my first car, a 1995 Subaru Legacy I actually had about 3 inches of snow come in the sunroof, I left it open while I was at school. A LOT easier to clean than the rain, just have to get it out fast before it melts!