I had a customer come in the other day and said that their A/C was smelling funky and the inside of the car was smelling bad. They said that something such as a rodent must have died under the hood and the smell was being sucked in from the air vents into the car. On further inspection, I didn’t find any dead rodents or any signs that rodents had been in the car (you’ll see chewed wires, rodent droppings, chewed cabin air filters, etc). In fact, this car was an older Mazda Miata and it doesn’t even have a cabin air filter.
Customers come in all the time with complaints that I just can not duplicate. I let the car run for a while switching the vents and changing from heat to air just to see if I could smell anything and all I really could smell is a slight moldy / lint smell which can be caused just from old age. After doing some research I learned that you can actually clean out your air vents and the inside of the cabin with a product called DWD2 Protect Automotive Mold Treatment.
What this product does is basically bombs the car and gets in the vents and the cabin and kills any mold and will freshen the car up. Honestly, when I found this product I used it on my vehicle and my family’s vehicles. The results were pretty impressive. Here’s a picture of the product on amazon:
I’ve done some research on how they tell you to use this product and I’ve found an easier way to use it. Basically, you’ll want to start the car and turn the A/C on and spray it through the air vents located under the wiper blades under the windshield. Once you do that, you’ll want to spray it in the vents of the car on the inside (while the car is off) and set it to re-circulation mode so that it recirculates the air in the car and closes the outside vents. You’ll want to let this work for about 5 minutes. Once it’s been 5 minutes, get in the car and set all the windows down and let it ventilate for about 15-20 minutes.
If you have ever smelled a moldy or linty smell in the car, this product will definitely make a difference. I keep a full bottle of this stuff at my work now and sadly to say I do smoke in my car so it definitely makes a world of different when you smoke in your car. I would even recommend using this frequently on newer cars, just to keep the car fresh and from any mold build up in the vents.
Thanks for reading and as always if you have any questions, you can email me on the contact page.
