kretos

alright the guy i bought my car off of smoked, i just cleaned out the ashtray the water was black, the intertior smells like smoke luckily he only had the car for 3 months so theres no stains on the t tops or wind shield, so heres the question it has a smokey smell that i wanna get rid of only thing i can think of is hot boxing the car cus i hate fabreeze.

Maverick H1L

iTrader: (8)

Here's a tip: Move the seats to both stops, front and back, and vacuum the heck out of the space under there. A lot of that crap gets under there and stinks up everything. Also, pull the center console out and vac under that too. MY PO smoked like a chimney and drank while he was doing it, so there was a pound of ashes and several aluminum can pull-tabs under there. Another thing you can do is get one of those scented air fresheners that smells like a new car and use that while doing that hot-boxing thing you mentioned.

And don't forget the sail panels when you are doing the smell treatment! Those are fabric too!

kretos

excellent i was thinking about removing the center console and vacumng , now i'm gonna do it

Maverick H1L

iTrader: (8)

Also pull up as much of the carpet as you can around the console and vacuum the heck out of the space below. Ashes are somewhat like mosquitoes-they get everywhere, annoy the heck out of you, and sometimes they make you sick.

I don't know as to whether you will also want to remove the front seats or not when doing this. The ashes also tend to get piled onto the seat rails and it is a lot easier to vacuum the heck out of the carpet that way, especially with a small power brush attachemnt for your vacuum. A lot more comes out that way. If it could be done easily, I would also suggest removing the seat covers and throwing them in the washer, but since you can't remove them merely by unzipping them and pulling them off, I can't advise you to do that.

kretos

the beauty of this car is the seats have covers i pulled them off and it helped the smell a bit, but i have to gt ridda this smell

Maverick H1L

iTrader: (8)

Throw the covers in the wash. The little bit of smell that will remain in the original covers will be masked or reduced by the cleaned covers. Use a permanent press cycle and make sure the washer is set to a large load. NO BLEACH!

And if they are leather covers, I have no idea what to do with them other than to go to the dry cleaners and tell them you hate the smoky smell and that you hate febreeze just as bad.

kretos

nah i'm just buying new ones the old ones were all torn up as far as vacuming goes i started about 10 min ago and its helping

Dante93GTZ

iTrader: (5)

My 87 IROC was a smoker car previously. I took out the center console and found about 500 cigarette butts... Talk about Gross.

Late 80's Marlboro... yuck.

kretos

thats pretty nasty, did you manage to get rid of that smoke smell?

Maverick H1L

iTrader: (8)

Yeah, finding cig butts definitely sucks in my book. We have to know if you got the smell out! After all that time, the smell must have eaten into the metal or something! Ewwww!

I know you hate febreeze, but that stuff works wonders! If you let the car sit in the baking sun for a while with the windows cracked the smell goes away.

kretos

its not that i hate febreeze but everytime i've used it it leaves a oily residue i'm gonna wait for a sunny day take off my t tops crack the windows and give febreeze a try

nolanr0413

put a box of arm and hammer in the car , i do it every winter and the car never smells.

kretos

holy **** i can't believe i never thought of that, thanks man that'll do it, arm and hammer saves all

burroughs

You will never get rid of the smoke smell by just 'cleaning'. You'll have to gut the Carpet, seat covers, Headliner, doorpanels, and the trunk carpet to get rid of the funk.

Parrydise7

iTrader: (1)

I've used the baking soda solution. Just remember that the stuff has sodium (or salt, I guess) in it, so it will corrode metal parts. I sprinkled it all over the fabric and then used a shop vac to get up as much as I could.

kretos

i tried the arm and hammer instaed of sprinkling it around i just put in a box that was open to "absorb" the odor and it worked awsome i can barely notice anything in my car now the smell is in the seats so i'm gonna steam clean them and it should smell great again

kretos

yeah i tend to keep corrisive things away from my car