Why did Vinyl Guard leave chalky looking haze in the dark blue section of my new seats.

Skipper April 5, 2016 Ask The Skipper

Doug asked:

Hi I sent in a question about my new upholstery. I wanted to clean and treat it before I put it back in my boat. I hosed the individual pieces down and applied the vinyl cleaner and scrubbed with a soft bristle brush and rinsed clean. I then let it air dry. Using a damp sponge I applied the Vinyl Guard, first one coat then let that dry and then a second coat per the instructions. Of all the parts I cleaned and treated, one of them doesn’t look so good and I’m not sure what I should do from here. There are some chalky looking places in the dark blue section of one of my seat backs. Everything else looks great. Do you have any suggestions to remedy this?

Answer:

For your convenience, I’ve highlighted the hyperlinks. Click on the hyperlink to get more information about the selected product.

The haze or blushing in some spots is where there is poor adhesion between the Vinyl Guard and the vinyl. Even though your vinyl was new, it was still contaminated with a lubrication release agent used in the calendaring process (manufacture of the vinyl sheets). If this is not removed, the Vinyl Guard will adhere to that instead of the vinyl and show as white blushing.

The instructions say to use a scrub brush, not a soft brush. This is necessary to get enough agitation to lift the lubricant so it can be rinsed clean. The same blushing may be on the rest of vinyl as well, but it’s not noticeable because of the lighter color. The different colors of vinyl could also have different or different amounts of the release lubricant or be from different batches or even different manufacturers and they may have been thoroughly cleaned during your cleaning process so the Vinyl Guard will bond to the vinyl and there will not be any blushing..

The solution is to remove the Vinyl Guard on the dark blue portions by scrubbing with a scrub brush and Boat Scrub until the blushing is removed. Then you can re-apply Vinyl Guard.

I wouldn’t worry about the lighter vinyl at this time, because it looks really good. At the end of the season, you can give the seats a good scrubbing with EZ Vinyl Cleaner and a coat of Vinyl Guard to protect the seats against mold and dirt penetration during winter storage. If you see any dull areas during the season where the Vinyl Guard has released, you can scrub those areas with some EZ Vinyl Cleaner and re-apply Vinyl Guard to get you through the season.

Marine grade vinyl is very resilient so you haven’t done any permanent damage. Even if you do nothing but clean and re-apply Vinyl Guard in the fall and again in the spring, the problem will resolve itself.

Thanks for your question and the photos. They really help answer your question.

Captain Aurora
Richard Kittar