My Car Smells Bad?

5 Tips to Remove bad odor from Car Interior.

Car interior bad smells could be caused by many reasons: Mold, dirt, dirty air-filters, cigarette smoke, water spills, Coffee spills, juices, milk, Sauces, French Fries, candy…food left-overs in the car are a major cause of bad smells.

If the car interior is not well taken care of, then Food, garbage and debris will keep piling up and therefore generating bad smells. These bad smells can become sometimes unbearable and a major cause of embarrassment when you give someone a ride.

Very often when we drive a car on a daily basis, the car interior gets dirty with time, which is normal in a very fast paced life as in the city of Calgary, AB. I Personally drive my car daily, and it’s hard, and sometimes impossible to keep the interior clean for a long time, especially during the harsh winter season we have.

One sure way to remove the bad smells from your car interior, is detailing your car, vacuuming, door’s interior panels deep cleaning and carpet and seats shampooing will definitely reduce the bad smell and if done properly, a professional car interior detailing will be enough to get rid of all the bad smells coming out of your car interior.

In a very busy and active city like Calgary and if you are a daily driver, it is advised to detail your car at least once per year to make sure the bad smells are gone and that your car interior is protected.

From my long experience in detailing car interiors, removing bad smells from the car interior is a very challenging task, and probably the hardest detailing step to accomplish, but along the years, I have been able to discover many easy techniques to tackle the odor problem and removing the smell permanently.

In this article I will share with you 5 methods or techniques that we actually use at Macdetailz Car detailing Shop Calgary, to remove bad odors from Car Interiors:

1.Vacuuming: Vacuuming your car interior is a very effective method to reduce the bad odor, and sometimes just vacuuming your car interior will make a big difference overall.

2.Baking soda: baking soda alone can be used to remove odors from almost anything, from refrigerators to carpet. Just sprinkle some in the offending area (on the carpet, in your shoes) and let it sit or put some on a plate and let it sit. It just sucks the odor right out of there. Make sure you vacuum the baking soda after you apply it on carpet or seats for a duration of at least 2 Hours.

3.Vinegar: Vinegar is an excellent sanitizer and odor remover, we use it for the car interior carpet, car interior seats… we mix it with our all-purpose cleaners when we clean door’s interior panels. When the car is A smoker’s car, and to remove the odor fully, all of the car interior fabric, leather, vinyl, plastic and rubber must be deeply cleaned and sanitized to make sure the smoke odor is eliminated.  A simple vinegar-based all-purpose solution that we use very often is mixing half cold water and half white vinegar in a spray bottle, spray the area lightly, wipe down using clean micro-fiber towels, repeat if necessary. Note, that although vinegar smell is very strong, it should be disappearing a couple hour after application, just make sure you aerate your car by keeping the windows fully open.

In case you need to spray more solution, make sure you have an extractor or a wet vacuum to extract the water residue from the carpet or the seat, it is not recommended to wet your upholstery and leave it in wet condition, as water residue or spills on fabric is one of the major factors for mold creation.

4.Steam cleaning: Steam cleaning is one of the best technologies to clean and sanitize at the same time, a small portable steam cleaner would do the job. Steam cleaning is 3% water, and could reach up to 300 °C, a very adequate temperature for bacteria and viruses’elimination. In this era with the corona Virus, it is becoming a must to clean and sanitize everything we use daily. At Macdetailz detailing shop, we use commercial grade steam cleaners, to clean everything from the door interior panels to the steps, fabric seats, leather seats, we use the steam to clean the vents and the air filter. Just make sure you don’t apply steam on the electronic panels or the stereo or the steering wheel, as it could damage the electrical devices.

5.Detailing: Detailing your car is the best solution to get red of all the bad smells and stains, it is very important to detail your car in a warm day, if not a garage would be terrific. First you will need to remove all the garbage from your car interior. Next, apply a thorough car interior vacuuming, make sure you vacuum the car interior thoroughly, and don’t forget about the corner and between the seats. The next step would be shampooing the carpet and the fabric seats, a small affordable extractor would do the job, make sure you get a good quality upholstery product and a soft vinyl brush, spray solution and brush softly, then extract the dirty water. Make sure you extract the dirty water fully until you see clean water coming out of the carpet or fabric through your extractor. For leather seats, a leather cleaner and a micro-fiber towel will do the task, this task should be done carefully.

After you finish the carpet and seats shampooing and extraction, the car interior upholstery will need to dry. During this time, you could clean the door’s interior panels and the steps, an all-purpose cleaner and clean micro-fiber towels would do the job, just make sure you spray as little solution as possible, and make sure you dry the solution fully using very clean and very soft micro-fiber towels. Finally, apply a high-grade protectant to protect your car interior vinyl, leather, plastic and rubber and to make the car interior shine at the same time.

If the smell persists, then it is recommended to bring your car to a professional detailing shop and make sure to add the odor removal service when ordering a full detail

If you live in Calgary or surroundings and want your car fully detailed by the professionals, then bring it to our detailing shop, we will take car of your car as if it was ours.

At Macdetailz we use all of the previous techniques to remove bad odors from car interiors, we also use the Ozone technology for stronger smells.

We are located in the chinook area, only 3 minutes drive from Chinook Mall center, and 5 minutes away from Downtown Calgary. Visit our shop today for all of your car detailing needs.