Removing smoker’s smell?

[Gumpy Guss]

mkay, my son’s new (used) car looks great, but it does have a noticeable smell of smoking in it. Not too bad, but it does make my sensitive nose run a little.

Any suggestions on removing the smell? And no, a pine tree or playmate hanging deodorizer is not an option.

Topic

[Brian]

[quote=”grg88″ post=73848]mkay, my son’s new (used) car looks great, but it does have a noticeable smell of smoking in it. Not too bad, but it does make my sensitive nose run a little.

Any suggestions on removing the smell? And no, a pine tree or playmate hanging deodorizer is not an option.[/quote]

Have the interior detailed. Some places can do an odor bomb which eliminates odors inside the car.

[Gumpy Guss]

Oh, thanks, I did not know about that.

One thing that you probably should NOT do, use an ozone generator. Years back we had a small smoky house fire, and the restoration guys used this ozone generator, which did kill the smells, however, every ball-point pen in the house seized up, and every rubber band just crumbled to pieces. Hate to think what it would do to all the rubbery things in a car’s interior, not to mention the other car parts when the ozone leaks out the vents.

[Bill]

A reputable car detailer would have an answer for you.

[Kasra]

Like many said a detailer would help.

Depends how severe the smell is.

Light smell. Drive with windows down, wipe down surfaces with car cleaner product (however, don’t use armor all very bad for your cars interior), vacuum, spray fabrize on the head liner. The headliner is the smell sponge.

Heavy smell. Detailer, but that might not even work.

[Paul]

[quote=”grg88″ post=73851]One thing that you probably should NOT do, use an ozone generator. Years back we had a small smoky house fire, and the restoration guys used this ozone generator, which did kill the smells, however, every ball-point pen in the house seized up, and every rubber band just crumbled to pieces. Hate to think what it would do to all the rubbery things in a car’s interior, not to mention the other car parts when the ozone leaks out the vents.[/quote]

The ozone probably pulled the sulfur out of the rubber bands causing them to deteriorate. IMHO, a reputable detailer would know the safe dosage and treatment time for a given car’s interior. Anyways, a professional would give you several alternatives.

Also, I would change the cabin air filter if the car has one. There are ones (Fram, I believe) that contain baking soda and activated carbon to remove odors.

[college man]

Lots of Febreze.

[Scott]

If detailing isn’t an option, Eric has a similar video on cleaning dog hair/smell from a car. [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiev5yZwDMM[/video]

[twiggy]

Also clean with glass cleaner the interior surfaces of all the windows and glass. Smoke really sticks to that. Clean all vinyl surfaces with a cleaner made for vinyl. Then spray febreze into all cloth surfaces.

[EricTheCarGuy]

[quote=”Hamberry” post=73931]If detailing isn’t an option, Eric has a similar video on cleaning dog hair/smell from a car. [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiev5yZwDMM[/video][/quote]

This is exactly what I was going to post. I can say that a year after I did this the smell is less. It comes back on some sunny days but it’s much better than it was.

[Author]

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