I can’t help to notice the vehicles that get traded in at the car dealerships I do jobs for on a daily basis. There are the clean ones that the dealers basically take to a mechanic, get them checked out, then do a fluff clean and resale within a short period of time. Then there’s the the ones that they have to, well in short, have to totally take apart, clean, then put them back together and hope they turn out okay. You know what that means, lots of money being spent to restore a vehicle back to a resale-able state, and guess who pays for that….YOU!

When you go to trade in your car, one thing that happens is your salesman or the sales manager will go out look at your car and then drive it. If the car is not clean, the guy takes that into consideration when he comes back to give you an offer, and believe me you will get an offer thats considerable lower then it should be. It lowers the resale value considerably when you pull up in a car that smells like Fido’s butt and looks like more food went on the carpets and other parts in the car then went into your mouth, or the dash looks like it has a carpeted cover on it, no wait, that’s just dust.

I can’t believe how many cars that come through the car lots that are just down right nasty. Just think of how much more money they probably would have made off of their trade, if they would have just cleaned the vehicle.

It’s not that hard to keep your car clean. I know in our busy lives its really hard to find time to clean out our cars, but just think how much money you can save in the end if you do. Your car is an investment of your hard earned cash.

Vacuum your car out at least every two to three weeks, more often if you can, this helps to keep the sand and dirt from getting ground down though the carpet and into the pad. Which keeps your carpet looking better longer and helps to cut down on wear on the carpet.

If you spill something on the carpet try to wipe it up as soon as possible, now I know thats not going to happen on every spill, I have 4 kids and spills don’t always get announced. Today was a perfect example.

I took a bucket of warm water, mixed with a generous amount of Mr. Clean, and a scrub brush and went to town. Now I didn’t soak the carpet, but I gave it a good scrubbing, then wiped it with a towel and then took my shop vac and sucked up the dirty water solution. Not only did it clean it good, but it also killed all the germs because as you know Mr. Clean kills germs. One thing to keep in mind is the amount of germs and allergen’s that live on the inside of a vehicle, keeping it clean keeps those nasty little critters out. Now my carpet is germ free and it smells nice too, not like a Tahoe full of kids. Now I’m not saying that Mr. Clean is the way to clean your carpet because there are a lot better products for carpet that work really well and probably better, but it worked well for me at the time and did some kid germ proofing too.

Wipe the rest of your vehicle down with a wet micro fiber towel, these little towels are wonders. They clean better then any other towel I’ve ever come across. I first came across the micro fiber towel back when I was doing exterior touch up, about 10 years ago. We used them for removing excess wax and rubbing compound, and wow what a time saver. They worked so much better then the terry cloth towel, they took the excess off so much quicker and left a better shine and also didn’t leave those fine scratches you get from a terry towel. At the time they were pretty expensive, but now you can get them pretty cheap. In the interior they work just as good. They advertise that they clean with just water without cleaners, and really they do a pretty good job without cleaners. All you have to do is wet it down with warm water and get to wiping. If you run across a spot that it won’t get off, try a little dish washing soap mixed in a bucket of warm water and scrub the area with the wet micro fiber towel or even a scrub brush, being careful not to let water run down into electrical parts. For those stubborn black marks on the plastic, try a Scotch Brite pad wet with your bucket of Mr. Clean and warm water and scrub the mark gone, now be careful not to scrub to hard, you don’t want to leave a scuff mark or remove dye.
Sparkle Auto Microfiber Towel – 12 Pack

Now I’m not one for all that slicky pucky (that’s my word for interior dressing or the shiny stuff), there’s no substitute for clean, spraying all that shiny stuff in the interior seems to cause more problems then what its worth. Not only does it make dust stick to your pieces and parts in the interior, but in some cases it can damage some of the trim pieces that are dyed with a water based dye, it has a tendency to cause the dyes to peel.

Lastly a little tip on the smell good gels in a can, or the oils that clip on your vents, or the sprays you spray around to make your vehicles smell better. This is really more of warning then a tip, they cause damage, yep, damage. I’ve run across a few vehicles that this stuff has ate the finish right off. Not really sure whats in this stuff but it causing a lot of damage to dashes, console areas, and vents. So if you use these thing be careful where you put them or spray them. Try to find a spot in the vehicle thats not going to cause and accident, one suggestion is under the seat. When spraying don’t ever spray the dash or instrument panels. I like some of these smell good stuffs as much as the other person but when I spray a vehicle down I’ll spray the carpet and cloth seats only, or even the A/C intake, but never right into the vents directly. I also use oder foggers, but I always am cautious of where I point the thing or when I set one off in a car I’ll lay towels down to avoid any drippings getting on the trim pieces.

I’ve keep my wife’s Chevy Tahoe as clean as possible knowing I’m not going to drive it forever and that someday I will trade it in. We love our Tahoe and plan to get a few more miles out of it. But when the day comes to trade it in on a new one I plan on getting top dollar.

By keeping your car clean on a regular basis will not only be a healthier investment of your time, but an investment of your money when it comes to resale value. A clean car brings more money then dirty one, period.

Well in the process of all the mess with my forum I had gotten an email from my forum in regards to How to Remove Stains in Leather just before the upgrade from a guy needing help, and I was going to reply to him in the forum but as you read I had some issues. So here’s the post that was sent to me and I want to apologize for having to do this in a post but like I have always tried to do is help everyone I can in anyway possible.

Michael

I need your help. I had a freaky incident happen where 2 cycle gasoline (gas and oil mix) got sprayed into the interior of my Mazda Miata. The leather seats, and interior door panel were both covered with the gasoline. The leather seats have pinhole perforations in the design and I’m afraid some of the gas might have gotten thru the holes into the padding below. How do I get the gasoline smell out of my seats? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Tom

Well Tom the first thing is to wipe up the majority of the gas mix with a towel, that’s the obvious, then grab a bottle of dawn dish soap, a bucket of warm water, a sponge, a soft scrub brush and a towel. Mix up a solution of soapy water and get to cleaning. Clean all the effected areas down with the soap and water. This should remove the oil from the mixed gas and the gas as well.

Next let it air out and dry.

The gasoline will dissipate and the smell should go away soon.

Now it’s time to condition your leather seat with Lexol Leather Conditioner to return the natural oils back into the leather seats. You might want to hit the vinyl also with with Lexol Vinylex wipes, this will also help the vinyl that might have lost some of the natural oils in it.

Hopefully the gas didn’t discolor or spot the leather seats. If it did, you might try scrubbing the whole seat with a scrub brush and your soupy water, this should remove the spots. If not another thing you can try is Lexol’s Leather Cleaner, and if that doesn’t work then it’s time to call your local Automotive Interior Repair Specialist to have the leather seats dyed.

I hope this helps Tom. I can’t stand the smell of gasoline either, especially inside a car, yuck. The smell will go away over time though, and the damage hopefully was minimal.

I’m looking to get my automotive interior repair forum up and going in the next couple of days, so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the meantime if you need anything just email me with your questions or even leave a comment at the end of this post.

I’ve been in this business for a long time and have come across some pretty nasty smelling used cars and have tried a lot of different products that claim to fix the smell problem. Well I’m here to tell you, sprays don’t fix it, all they do is mask it with a smell that in some cases is so strong that they give you a headache, and after a while your smell is right back. I’ve seen guys come in to the lots with fogger units and bomb the inside of some of these cars and after about a week or two of sitting on the lot, well you guessed it, the smell is back.

The problem is, is that the source of the smell is still there. The elimination of odor has to be done at the source and that source has to be removed before any odor control can be effective.

To eliminate the source of smell, the car has to be cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom. That means the french fries hiding under the seat have to go.

Clean every nook and cranny that you can. Using a mild detergent, like dawn dish soap mixed in warm water, a scrub brush, and a micro fiber towel. Scrub and wipe down all the panels thoroughly. Being sure to clean the headliner too, this is a place that is often missed and an odor magnet. Just because there is no traffic on the headliner doesn’t mean you don’t have to clean it. Think about it when someone smokes, where does the smoke usually go? Up… Right into the headliner. So be sure to clean the headliner too.

Carpet is a big player in the smell in your car. Most odors that are in your car are from the carpeting and pad. A lot of times you think you have the carpet clean, which you very well might, but what’s underneath the carpet is the culprit, your pad. The pad soaks up all that junk that has been spilled or drug into the car from the outside and just sits there, and well stinks. So when cleaning the carpet try to use a good extractor to suck all that gunk out the carpet and pad, this will get to that source I’ve been talking about, and eliminate some of it.

Now that we’ve cleaned the car from top to bottom it’s time to treat the problem at it’s source. Just because we’ve cleaned the car doesn’t mean the odor is gone. That part is deep, at the micro level. What’s at that micro level that is the cause? It’s bacteria and fungus. It’s that bacteria and fungus that are making the car smell. So to get to that we have to use something that will kill and eliminate the odor at that micro level.

Have you ever walked outside after a rain and everything smells so fresh and clean. Well that smell your smelling is ozone. Ozone is something we all hear about on a daily basis with the go green thing goin on and the depletion of the “ozone layer”. What is ozone you ask, well it’s when the oxygen (O2) that is all around us rises up to the upper atmosphere, and is exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. That oxygen is naturally turned into ozone (O3). That is the “ozone layer” that protects us from the sun’s harmful UV rays. Since ozone is heavier than air it naturally falls back to earth. This ozone as it falls naturally purifies our air and water. Without ozone nature could not purify our Earth. It is the second most powerful sterilant in the world and its function is to destroy bacteria, viruses and odors.

Did you see that, ozone destroys bacteria, viruses and ODORS.

Now that we are clear on that, let me let you in on a little secret. You can make ozone and use it to eliminate the odor in your car. Yep ozone in your car.

By placing a little ozone generator in your car you can kill all the odor causing bacteria, and fungus that is making your car stink.

I have seen it done at the dealer ships I go to and it works. After the car has been detailed and cleaned up, they take this little machine and place it in the car, roll up the windows, turn it on and let it set for about half a day, and when their done the smell is gone.

What the ozone does is kills the bacteria by rupturing the cell hence destroying it. It kills the spores of the fungus so that when moister is reintroduced to it there’s nothing to sprout up again and make it smell.

Ozone in your car is the secret to eliminating the odors and keeping it that way. By destroying the smell at it’s source you eliminate the odor for good.

So now your wondering where in the world do I get my hands on a ozone generator. Well here of course.

I have done some research and have come up with a couple ozone generators that I have seen on the lots and that I know work well. Now these aren’t just air purifiers, or ionizers. These are the real deal, these are true ozone generators that will eliminate the odor by oxidizing the air inside the car and producing a toxic O3 cocktail for those pesky bacteria and fungus smells.

One is the Lightning Air LA-3IC Sanitizer , it’s a small and very portable ozone generator. This is the commercial unit and will definalatly do the trick in a very short period of time. It’s designed to treat up 8000 cubic ft. which is more then enough coverage for a car. It will eliminate all of the below odors and more and is not just for the car either, you can use this thing anywhere there is a smell needing dealt with. Sells for around $350, which is a small investment for what you get.

• Cigarette Smoke • Mold & Mildew • Smoke Damage
• Paint Fumes • Cooking Odors • Decaying Matter
• Pet Odors • Carpet Odors • Water Damage
• Cleaning Fumes • New Construction • Pesticides

Another is an even smaller of a unit that I think would be ideal for the use inside of a car, it’s the Uvonair Junior 1000 Ozone Generator and has a treatment coverage of about 1000 cubic feet. The claim is that this little jewel is the one of the most powerful ozone generators available. The Uvonair is ideal for homes, offices, workplaces, vehicles, anywhere that can benefit from purer, cleaner air. Runs right at $200 and it’s not as expensive as most, so is a very economical choice.

Now once we have eliminated the source of the smell with the ozone generator, how about keeping it that way with an ozone generator that just plugs into the cigarette lighter and keeps the air in your car clean and pure for as long as you wish. The Cigarette Lighter Air Purifier is a very inexpensive little device that will keep your car at the level of odor control that you want. Now this is probably not for the true funky smellers that need a good cleaning and deodorizing with a bigger unit, but more for the newer or cleaner cars that don’t need a blasting and for those cars that need a constant treatment.

Odor elimination in your car doesn’t have to be frustrating and you sure don’t have to spend a fortune on sprays or plug ins that only mask the odor. Try what is only natural and use ozone for your car.

Lightning Air LA-3IC Sanitizer

Uvonair Junior 1000 Ozone Generator

Cigarette Lighter Air Purifier