I had given it a quick clean up when we parked it last September, but when we arrived here at the end of April and got it fired up, it had a nasty smell in it.
Nasty, like something died somewhere.
Now, we do get a lot of mice, and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for one of these little rodents to have got himself somewhere he couldn't get out of. Despite the fact that I had the car stored in such a way to avoid letting any mice get near it.
Anyhow, we couldn't find anything amiss, and simply bought an air freshener. That masked the smell (kind of!) for a while, and now it's not noticeable at all.
But, I figured there was still a carcass hiding somewhere. And, the car was a mess. We have used it the last few years for carting empty cans and bottles from the park back to the recycling depot. Some of the bags leaked, and had made a bit of a mess on the rear cargo area carpet and rear seats.
And, from driving on the dirt roads around here, there was a lot of dust. Like I said, it's nearly impossible to keep it clean.
I took out the rear carpet and shampooed it.
Yuck. I can't stand it like this.
Took the seats out to clean the dust properly.
I took the seats out. The dust was everywhere, and there was a build up of three years of it. Of course I had given it a quick clean up every couple of months, but never a good one. The problem is that we'll drive it next week and it will be dirty again!
And I still couldn't find anything dead.
I checked the fresh air intake, under the carpets, in the console casing. Everywhere reasonable without tearing the whole car apart. Couldn't find any remains.
Oh well. At least the car is clean now. Until the next time we drive it...
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Not a damp smell then?
ReplyDeleteNo definitely not a damp smell!
DeleteOh my goodness. I never saw anyone clean his/ her car so throughly. You put a new spin on detailing. 😂
ReplyDeleteKevin has never done a car cleaning that thoroughly before either but it certainly needed it, plus he was trying to find the dead mouse!
DeleteWow, that's some serious cleaning. Maybe you could do Mr. Clean commercials... :cD
ReplyDeleteYep, that was a serious cleaning! He would have to shave his head for the commercials then, not sure I could see that happening. ;-)
DeleteOkay, this has shown me what a complete slacker I am in keeping the car clean. So rather than change my stripes, I will try to forget I saw this:))
ReplyDeleteHaha, ok, we'll pretend that we didn't see this comment either. ;-)
DeleteThat car has been all over, I am surprised you didn't find any dead bodies from minihitchhikers :) Maybe it was liquor spillage from bottles, that can smell so bloody nasty too.
ReplyDeleteYes, the Little Blue Car has certainly been lots of places. Nope no dead bodies, at least none that Kevin could find. The smell was more that of a rotting animal then of spilled liquid but it seems better now so that's all that is important. We will take more care though so that the car it is better protected from the recycling bags when we transport them this summer.
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