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cleaning advice: car detailing

Anyone have experience getting slight odors out of a car?  Any specific product to make leather seats look and smell great? 

We planned to buy DH a (much needed) new suv/car this summer but my dad has offered to give us my grandparents' suv as part of his portion of the estate wrap up.  Sadly both grandparents died this year. 

It's great (perfectly maintained, low mileage, awd, luxury package, 7 passenger mountaineer) but it could use a good cleaning and has a little smell (mix of "old people" + musty/staleness since it was rarely used in the past year + I think my dad's sister may have been driving it recently and she smokes).  I called a couple of car detailing places and the cheapest quote was $450, which might be ok since the car is essentially free but I think we could do it ourselves since it's not dirty at all (I doubt anyone ever sat in the back seats) and we are not afraid of a little deep cleaning.

Does fabreez really work?  My mom suggested using the upholstery attachment on her steam cleaner... any other ideas?  If it would quit raining around here long enough to just open the windows and air it out a bit that might help a ton.

 

Re: cleaning advice: car detailing

  • they do have fabreze for cars...it does work.  also you may want to condition the leather seats and that will help clean and lift the odors.  you could also steam clean the carpet areas, just make sure they dry out completely otherwise you'll have musty smells.  they have these moisture things that suck out the moisture of the car...i forget what they are called but they work well...i think you get at home depot (used to dry out basements...sold in powder form).

    walmart or any shucks will carry all things you need for the leather seats.  mother's is a great car detailing brand ( i LOVE detailing cars...weird, i know).

    awesome for the free suv!

    Lilypie Angel and Memorial tickers
  • I'm not a huge febreeze fan - I don't think it really gets rid of the smell. I'd go the steam cleaning route.
  • imagehusky422:

    they do have fabreze for cars...it does work.  also you may want to condition the leather seats and that will help clean and lift the odors.  you could also steam clean the carpet areas, just make sure they dry out completely otherwise you'll have musty smells.  they have these moisture things that suck out the moisture of the car...i forget what they are called but they work well...i think you get at home depot (used to dry out basements...sold in powder form).

    walmart or any shucks will carry all things you need for the leather seats.  mother's is a great car detailing brand ( i LOVE detailing cars...weird, i know).

    awesome for the free suv!

    thanks for the advice and personal recommendation - just what I needed.  I think I'm going to really like detailing. 

    I think we will wait for a patch of nice weather to really go to town on it so that I can make sure it has lots of drying time plus like I said, some solid air out time would probably work wonders, but cleaning should bring it back to like new.

  • Have you tried leaving some open containers of baking soda inside the car until you have time (or the weather cooperates!) to dig in and deap clean? The baking soda will absorb odors and help get a jump start on getting rid of unwanted smells. I'm not a huge fan of Febreeze - it just temporarily covers up odors. Fred Meyer carries a cheap, portable steam cleaner by Bissell - I used that to steam clean our RV, which smelled horribly and it worked!

  • inamrainamra member
    1000 Comments
    We have leather seats and when our car started smelling like our dogs, we actually found that the biggest help to getting the odors out is to steam clean the carpeted areas of the car. So we rented a Rug Doctor and it really worked wonders for us. GL!
    Sept 2008 Wedding | May 2010 & Mar 2012 Babies
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