Funky Car Smell

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Just for closure sake, I simply aired the car out over a series of drives, and the smell went away. Still gotta try that baking soda/vinegar thing. Thanks all.

That will work for now, but the smell will be there next time the car gets wet. That is a problem with diving vehicles. I had the same problem with my van. Never smelt too bad till I got it a little too wet after one day of diving. That just set it all off. The only thing that really works is getting what ails the car out of the car. I recently bought a new steam cleaner (rug doctor) and that did the trick. I pulled nasty black dirt out of my whole van, but salty black dirt out of the whole back half (where the dive gear always go. I did this two complete times with letting it dry for about an hour in between. The car smells like new again. This is a 12 year old minivan (we have owned for 9 of those years. I might treat it with a light spray of febreeze in a week, but there is absolutely nooooooo odor any more. I even had my wife test it and she is the ultimate authurity. She got her super-smell power when she got pregnant with our first child (many women do) and it never went away. She could smell the van from 10 paces and didn't want to get in it. We went for a drive the day after I cleaned it and she said she didn't smell anything that was there before.

As for the method I used to clean. The first tank of water I cleaned the whole van (seats and carpet) with upholstery cleaner. It works to get the greasy/oily dirt out and is hight foam so will help with a lot of the deeper dirt. The second tank I ran through I used the normal rugdoctor OxyClean carpet cleaner and it got what was left out. If you go the steamer route make sure you follow the instructions and only use about half of what the bottle tells you to.
 
Buy new car seats.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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