drewkaree
Jetboaters Fleet Admiral 1*
- Messages
- 6,837
- Reaction score
- 24,772
- Points
- 802
- Location
- West Allis & Fremont, WI
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2019
- Boat Model
- AR
- Boat Length
- 21
I ran that ozone generator on Saturday for about an hour.. It smelled badly of ozone when I dropped it off at the dealer on Monday. They did the manifold and rear window and I picked it up today. I still smelled mold when I opened the door.. I took it to the car wash and I wiped down most of the interior surfaces. Gonna give it another day and maybe give it another go with the ozone generator. I'm thinking that I should pay a detailer to go through the interior and steam the carpets and headliner. It's too big of a job for my harbor freight steamer. They should be able to get the carpet under the seats.
Here's how I run mine, I leave the car running, put the HVAC on recirculate, and run an extension cord through the window. I close the window as well as I can, then set the timer for 120 minutes. I set a timer for 15 minutes (more, if my wife complains that it's bad), and let everything run (car and ozone generator).
After the 15 minute timer is up, I open the door and shut the car off, and let the ozone generator finish the 120min cycle.
When that's done, I unplug the extension cord, open the car, and open every window and sunroof. Start the car again, and run the HVAC on high, and let it run for 15 minutes to allow the ozone to settle out.
I have a garage, not sure if you do too, but then I leave the windows open overnight. The ozone smell is usually fine at that point, and it will stay smelling like that for at least a week, unless I have another cigar. I usually do this about once a month during the summer, and in the winter I hit it when the car starts to smell stale.
I can imagine the smell is quite powerful if you got in soon after treating it. Like @Coult45 said, sometimes it'll take a number of treatments to get some success - think of it this way, it's been "percolating" for a number of weeks or months on you, so your case is going to be more extreme than even my cigar smoke.
Mequiars makes a bomb if you want to add that, but I'd try the ozone treatment 2-3 more times before adding the scent bomb. There's no harm in trying it, but it may be more effective after the ozone has knocked down the smell a bit more.
I HAVE smelled cars that were beyond hope, but that was my wife's aunt who let her beagles destroy her car in horrible fashion, and she was equally horrible with her hoarder-like cleanliness tendencies. Replacing the seating in the car couldn't fix it - the ozone generator did a great job knocking it down, but it always had some slight scent of "WTF is that, are we near a farm?"
The Meguiars bomb isn't too spendy, but I don't know what you're looking at as a point where it's too much out of your pocket - @suke may have some input, since he's great at exteriors, maybe his expertise extends to the interior, or he knows of a magic bullet for stuff like this