de-stinking a car interior

You need to locate where the smell is coming from. Open it up and air it out then come back and go a sniffing.

you can clean the carpets effectively with boiling water and a shopvac.

You didn't happen to have a leaking baby bottle in it, did you? That can be ghastly.

Push it over a cliff.

Nope, I'm a single male. No little ones ever ride in there. (I needed a hauling vehicle, and a pickup won't fit in my garage. The removable seats usually aren't in it, but I had to put them back in to make room for the snow blower in the garage.)

Only if you are standing at the bottom.

LOL! We had a car come into the detailing shop as a trade in, a nice Lexus

300, IIRC, and did a good cleaning. But it had this awful *smell*. We used an extractor on the seats and the carpets, and set off a 'stink bomb' that is supposed to remove (or at least cover over) smells, and then ran the ionizer on it for hours. Next day we came in and opened it up and it STILL stunk to high heaven. We cleaned it with everything we had, and ran the ionizer overnight, all night. Smelled good when we came in, but an hour after removing the ionizer the smell was back again. I went for lunch, and when I came back the shop foreman, who had started on the car originally, said, "Hey, JJ, check this out!" On his desk was a milk carton. He just opened it up on his desk and we all almost gagged! It was shoved *WAY* under the seat and could only be found by crawling in the back seat with your head to the floor...

PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

aemeijers wrote in news:bMEwl.463428$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

Eat my shorts.

Did you try checking the undercarriage? You might have some road kill wedged in somewhere.

How is the weather in your location, warm enough for flies? If so, maybe their comings and goings could lead you to the source of the stench.

Assuming dry weather, windows down, I would think.

Did you check the trunk and under the hood for dead animals? Take carpet out of the trunk to wash? If no animals, it is most likely spills or dropped food...had a leaky package from grocery store? One of the worst food smells, from my experience, is rotten potato. If no material is found, I would flood the carpet on the floor a couple of times, let it soak an hour or so, and remove thoroughly with wet vac. Then keep car open on a nice sunny day to dry out.

Might need to pull the ventilation ducts under the dash.

It didn't.

After the corpse thawed out, probably...

Down, of course -- how else do you expect the smell to leave?

You're going about this wrong. You need to locate and remove the source of the stench, then thoroughly clean the contaminated part(s). Soap and water will do just fine. Randomly spritzing odor-"removal" products (which really are simply odor-*masking* products) isn't going to help.

Activated charcoal (available anywhere that sells aquarium supplies) actually absorbs odors. Find the source of the stink, remove it, clean the affected parts, then spread activated charcoal around the area. Vacuum the charcoal up in a week.

No.

Oh, eventually, sure -- but I doubt a month will do it. Two or three years, maybe...

I saw an air filter that had a animal nest in it, Ive had squirrels under my hood, find what stinks or it maybe many many months for it to go away, what does it smell like.

Many years ago a newly sold Chrysler/Dodge car was found to have the egg lunch sandwiches of a production line worker left in a door!

The local dealer pretty well took the car interior apart before they were found at the bottom of a door below the window mechanism.

But the worst car smell in recent was when we turned around on the highway and went back to look at a pickup 'featured' at an auto dealer's location at a very good price.

Mileage was reasonable, external condition very good. But when we opened the door the smell was awful and obvious; the previous owner/ driver had been a chain smoker!

Even the headline looked stained and would have to be replaced! The door liners, seats, everything inside, stunk. Heard afterwards, since this is not that big a community, that the owner had died of lung cancer in his late 40s or early

50s; .............. not surprised. In fact that he lived THAT long!

Here, the cost to a single 20 pack/day smoker is now equivalent to a car payment. Or one could be driving a BMW or Mercedes instead of a Chev. So smoking makes no sense.

on 3/19/2009 11:25 PM (ET) aemeijers wrote the following:

I've read the other responses but can offer some more suggestions. Check the engine air filter for dead chipmunks, if you don't have a cold air type filter. They like to build nests in there. The one in my air cleaner chewed up the paper filter to build a nest and left a bunch of acorn shells in there. Make sure there are no dead wet leaves and debris in the heater. Also check that the heater drain (which drains into the engine compartment) is not plugged with debris. Mine was clogged so badly one time that water had filled the heater blower compartment and leaked onto the carpet.

If it is in fact a dead critter, nothing but removal of the little rodent corpse will de-stinkify it. Had a similar issue in my parents' basement once upon a time... otherwise you'll have to wait for it to completely decompose, which could take months.

nate

Check behind the dash, in the ducts as well.

Boy this reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry's car got some BO and he couldn't get it out. He wound up giving the car away after he couldn't sell it.

Good luck!

Willshak and ransley had some good comments, add one: the heater blower cage. They like to make nests in there, too.

You may have to start removing panels, unless you can find the 'snack' one of the kids left somewhere! ;)

aemeijers wrote in news:yLEwl.463425$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

YOU stink. It's not the vehicle.

Use a mild H2O2 (Hydrogen peroxide) solution on the rugs, and try an ozone-ator overnight. A simple hot water or steem cleaner GENERALLY cannot sterilize the carpet and underpad - where a lot of smells originate.

My brother bought a Sable wagon. The owner had loaded it with garbage to go to the dump, then died. Car sat for several months. IT STUNK!!!!!!.

He bought it cheap enough that he couldn't loose, even breaking it down for parts. Only had a few thousand KM on it, so he cleaned it up. It had the ozone in it about 4 times - doesn't smell bad now at all -

2 years later.

It's a VAN- no trunk. No smell under hood, or under dash, or from dash vents. It could be an old winter spill, since The Thaw only came a few days ago around here, but I don't eat in the car, and I haul the grocery bags in plastic busboy tubs, just to prevent things falling out and rolling away. (BTDT)

Stopped on way home from work today, and bought another jug of extra-strength Febreze, and dosed it all again, and it seems to be helping some. Van is sitting in sunlight with windows down right now- have to remember to put it away come dark so nothing else climbs in.