Just been away for a few days to a little place (shack) I own in the countryside.
Here if you are interested;
tinyurl.com/hlvkccs
However, I left the Landcruiser parked for a few days because we were either using feet or horses. Unfortunately a leaking carton of milk was left in the back and it has now soaked into the carpet.
Is there any alternative to taking the carpet out for a thorough wash? Which doesn't look like an easy job.
Right now the smell is hard to live with. Will it eventually fade?
Last edited by: R.P. on Tue 29 Mar 16 at 08:17
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I think i'd try Febreeze for starters.
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Are there any places where they do interior car cleaning? If the smell is bad I'd be tempted to leave it with someone like that for an afternoon.
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> Right now the smell is hard to live with. Will it eventually fade?
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No, it will only get worse. The problem is that the smell is coming from live bacteria and the only products that I know that will kill them off is bicarbonate of soda or a solution of beer line cleaner. You might be lucky and get rid of it by applying it from the top, but be prepared to have to remove the carpet and sound deadening if that doesn't work.
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You could try home brew steriliser, that's a pretty good cleaning agent i would have thought.
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>> No, it will only get worse. The problem is that the smell is coming from
>> live bacteria
It will yes, but it will take a long long time time. The live bacteria will get real pongy, then they will be dead bacteria and get pongier, the pongy +pongier smell will have permeated the carpet fabrics, and remain for a fair while, then naturally fade.
We are talking 12-18 months for the whole cycle. You have the worse pong to come yet.
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I have a spray bottle of stuff intended for dealing with feline mishaps in the house, but I've used it in the cars too (Beestling Minor has been prone to motion sickness at times) with good results. I bet it would help with the milk residue too - although whether you can get it in Chile is another matter. I'll look it up tonight and check the active ingredient in case you can get something similar.
Meanwhile, spirit vinegar might be a better antibacterial than bicarb, although that will be useful afterwards to eliminate the lingering smell.
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A mate of mine had a Mk3 Cortina, a Ghia or some such top of the range model which was his pride and joy. He was working as a milkman at the time and on his way home took a few pints in his car which someone had forgot to deliver and he'd been asked to drop off. He had to brake sharply and the bottles fell off the back seat and broke. He tried every thing he could to get rid of the smell but it never went and he eventually traded the car in with air fresheners stuck all over the cabin to disguise the smell. I think he had put up with it for a year before he cracked and had enough.
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The smell never goes completely......it gets worse before it gets better and lingers for ever.......my advice is to sell the motor to someone with no sense of smell asap.
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Jeez, I didn't know it was going to be this bad. One can only imagine that living in a hot country its going to be worse and more quickly.
New carpet time, I guess.
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>>>>
>> New carpet time, I guess.
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You'll get used to it after a while. When you've got passengers just apologise for your wife's feet.
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I once knew a chap who, having lost his sales manager job was put on gardening leave to cover his notice period and was to keep hold of his company Ford Granada Estate during this period.
However after 2 weeks he was told to bring in the Granada and pick a pool car as the Sales Director (who had fired him unjustly he believed) fancied the Granada for himself.
My friend consulted his car dealer BiL who advised him to carefully pull back the front carpet and pour a pint of milk over the underfelt material, let it dry out , and replace the carpet.
He had to drive it back with all the windows open and when he eventually returned the pool car he noted the Granada was sat in the car park clearly not having moved for weeks.
The secretary told him "I don't know what you've done to that car but no one has been able to even sit in it!"
The BiL said it was an old car dealer trick when trading cars with another trader who had previously traded you a car with hidden faults.
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Bite the bullet.
Go to an autotrimmers, and get it redone.
In burgundy.
Also,make sure they throw out the underlay. (there's a spanish joke in that).
If the stench gets into the headlining, that's a few more $$$$
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Bum.
I guess that's what I need to do.
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As Dave will remind us before long, I spilt creosote on the back seat of a Vectra. The smell was pretty bad. The car wasn't that old at the time (4 or 5 years) and the insurance company wrote it off. Could be cos creosote is more lethal than milk though.
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Really? Not even just a new back seat? That is scary.
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Why did I have to get to this one first?
}:---)
Cost of new seat against residual value of 4yo Vectra. Go - as the insurer did - figure.
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Yeah, it was a leather seat (and damage was a bit more than that). it was, however, top of the range Vectra 3.2 Elite. I 'd investigated the cost of replacement (leather seats btw) and I think it was about £1k for the part alone. But there was other upholstery and soft furnishings involved, and creosote is carcinogenic.
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>> As Dave will remind us before long,
I wasn't actually going to mention it. You've only got yourself to blame this time ;)
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.....my
>> advice is to sell the motor to someone with no sense of smell asap.
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Surely he'd have more luck selling it to someone with no sense of taste? ;-)
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"Right now the smell is hard to live with."
Alas, not a good way to win friends - and I'm afraid that I can offer no cure.
Back in '75 when I first joined my career-company, I couldn't understand why, whenever we went out as a group, no one wanted to travel with the engineer in his car; I assumed that it was because he was a lairy driver - which he was. On one occasion, I found myself having to travel with him in his Hillman Avenger - and I almost threw up at the foul stench that met me. The story was that he had been been transporting a bottle of milk on the back seat when it fell over, emptying the entire contents into the fabric. This was at a time when our main aim in life was to impress young wimmin - and this certainly wouldn't impress any that I knew.
He never did get rid of the smell and, after a couple of years, the car went back to the hire company. That was sufficient warning to all of his colleagues to never carry an opened bottle of milk in the car. Our colleague was pleasant chap, but prone to disasters; the irony was that a couple of years later, he was done for drink-driving and left the company - maybe he should have stuck to milk?
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This does not bode well.
Its warming up, bearing in mind its Autumn here, and its up to around 28 degrees and forecast to get higher this afternoon.
I just went to the shops in the car which was unpleasant.
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Do they have scrapyards/eBay in Chile? Purchase a set of carpets and any underlayer for your model from there, wash and dry them and get a local garage to replace the old.
You will NEVER be happy with the current carpets. They must be burnt.
This is worse than the smokie creosote incident by many degrees.
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Talking of smells in cars, this is a true personal story... Please excuse the slight thread drift. Names have been changed.
Years ago I bought a retail pet supplies business from John Smith in a West Yorkshire town. Very long established, it was a retirement sale with large potential. The owner, a lovely man but slightly eccentric, dabbled in snakes... You can see where this is going? He liked the odd drink or six after work on a Saturday night, normally in a local pub whose clientele were mostly quite thirsty characters. He would always take some of the snakes into the pub with him after work, taking them out of the hessian sack to pass round the clientele.
On one occasion he did not tie the hessian sack properly, and couldn't remember how many snakes were in there anyway. He drove home and thought nothing of it until a week later when there was the most awful smell in the car. The skeleton was eventually found in the roof lining.
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FIL did this in his Discovery - tried everything, and in the end got rid of it as he just couldnt shift the smell
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Apparently the worse substance that you (one) can pour into a stream is milk. Ruddy lethal stuff. Major clean up or get rid. I don't think that it will ever be right. Sorry.
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After a day or so I thought I'd dodged a bullet and that you lot were over reacting. However, I left the car in the sun this afternoon and when I got back to it - O MY GOD! The entire thing smelled like my memories of primary school vomit.
Nasty nasty nasty.
However, turns out that the rear loadspace carpet and liner comes out, and its therefore been taken out and jet washed. We shall see how it smells after an afternoon in the sun tomorrow.
But I fear I shall be investing.
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Milton sterilising fluid is a mild bleach. I recently used on mouldy car upholstery with good results.
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Those fragrant laundry beads that you add to your wash are good at hiding smells or any of carpet powders you leave then vacuum could be used.
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Surely a clothes peg on the nose is cheaper ;)
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Take the carper and insulation out, put it on the ground and then
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q8inM0gKVo
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The cat stuff I mentioned earlier is called Beaphar Spray Away Plus. Along with the usual generic detergenty ingredients, it lists benzyl salicylate, citronellol and hexyl cinnamal. I don't know much about any of those, but I imagine the first denatured some of the smellies while the other two add a more tolerable smell of their own.
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>> much about any of those, but I imagine the first denatured some of the smellies
Nope, it's another perfume. Something to denature the smell would be quite clever.
So far as Febreze is concerned, I cannot bear the smell of it.
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So it is. I had a look at the maker's site, which says it uses 'friendly microbes', which might help to displace the bacteria that are creating the sour-milk pong. (It's bacteria that create most of the smells we object to in, er, natural products.)
Meanwhile, one of the clear antibacterial sprays like Dettox (or its Chilean equivalent) might attack the milk bacteria enough to limit the odour.
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I have a cure. Goldie from a drained canal will displace the smell of rancid milk.
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Milk and cars - maltrap
