May 6, 2022 - Golf Cart Project

Last fall we purchased a 1994 Club Car gas golf cart from a friend. After getting home from Florida we pulled it out of the shed at the lake and hauled it home for a good cleaning. Prior to our purchase it had been sitting outside and was really a mess. The biggest concern for Kelly was the great amount of mold on and in the seat cushion material. She said if I couldn't get it off she was buying seat covers for it. I didn't like that idea because the seat covers I've seen usually don't fit right and a friend pointed out that they get wet and stay wet. Here is a picture of one of the seat backs and the seat cushion when I started working on them.

The first thing I tried to clean them with was a mold and mildew remover spray we had in the closet from a local store. It worked some on the surface mold but did not touch what was stained into the material. I got on YouTube and tried several methods guys suggested to remove the mold. One was a homemade concoction of vinegar, fabric softener, and hydrogen peroxide. I learned you should never use bleach on vinyl because it dries out the material which causes it to crack.  The concoction worked a little better than the store bought stuff. It was sprayed on, kept wet, and then let sit on there until it evaporated. Not satisfactory results at all.

Much of the staining was actually down in the vinyl material and the concoction didn't getting any of that out. I went back online looking for something that would work. I found a guy who, after using all the sprays I had used, tried "Marine 31 Mildew Stain Remover". He said it worked when nothing else did and even without any scrubbing. His seats looked like mine when he started and they came out great in his pictures. I ordered a spray bottle for $21.00. It arrived yesterday and I sprayed the cushions and let them sit for half hour. After a half hour I was blown away at how good the seats looked. There were still some stains so I sprayed the seats again and let them sit for a couple of hours. They came out GREAT. Here are the pictures.

There are just the faintest brown spots on the seat bottom cushion but overall we are thrilled with the results. The $21.00 bottle of "Marine 31" worked wonders and was cheaper than seat covers. I will coat the seats with 303 Protectant to cut down on future UV damage and hopefully slow down any mold growth. 

The next project with the cart will be to wash it and clean it top to bottom. Here are a couple of pictures of what it looks like today.

It is a 1994 model so it is not a peach by any means. It has a lot of scrapes on it in various places. I may get ambitious and sand those all out and spray paint it later on. I'll wait and see how much we actually use it before I do all that work. It starts fine and runs but it is definitely cold-natured. It reminds me of the old cars in the 50s with the manual chokes that you had to finesse to get to run right until the engine warmed up. More pictures to follow once back together and cleaned up.