Smoke smell

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ThirdgenTa

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I had a friend contact me regarding 3 cars that were in her garage when she had a house fire. The windows were down and the interior now smells like smoke and has some ash and stuff inside. Does anyone have any tips on removing the smell? Do the Dakota Odor bombs work???
 
cloth or leather seats? cloth is alittle harder to remove smells from, leather is a little easier. regardless i would clean all the surfaces in the car, dress all the leather/vinyl again. shampoo the carpets every square inch if possible, then i would either call a detail shop and see if they use a ozone generator and they wont charge much to let it run(shouldn't cost much anyways) or you can get carpro's SO2PURE which is basicaly a coating for all interior surfaces which attack the odor molecules and remove the odor, it also protects against future odors from what i read. the odor bombs for a thing like that MIGHT work but i wouldn't chance it. i would just either buy a ozone generator or buy the so2pure....ozone might be better because it gets into every nook and crannie but if ran too long can damage interior plastics(have to be a idiot to let it do that as it takes a long time to discolor plastics). hope i helped and hope i didn't make things harder but doing them right is easier then doing them wrong and having to go back and waste more time/money!...good luck!
 
Ozone generators are expensive. Unless you feel like forking over some dough I'd try the So2Pure. I have yet to try this product but have heard great things about it.

As others have said ensure you clean everything (especially the headliner!). If you have a vapor steam cleaner it will come in very handy if it's a heavily smoked in car. Then shampoo the floors and seats if they are cloth.

Oh and replace the cabin air filter.
 
ThirdgenTa said:
How many cars do you think the Carpro will do? Do you just spray it on everything?
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I just pull the trigger once per foot space (if that makes sense? don't know what else to call em). If you do it that way, I think you'd be good for up to about 10 cars or so. Not entirely sure. From what I've read, you can spray it on anything.
 
Yeah I definately don't do enough cars or get payed nearly enough to get an ozone generator. I do not have a steamer either. What's another way to clean the headliner? I have folex, krud kutter and apc+.
 
Folex on a MF should do a good job of cleaning it. May not get all the odor out though as sometimes the smell can really saturate the headliners. As always with headliners just be careful using chemicals (or steam for that matter). Not too much or the glue may release.
 
I used the 50ml sample of So2Pure last week. I deliver pizzas and sometimes smoke so the smell get pretty funky. I sprayed roughly half the bottle and didn't really notice the difference. But I re-sprayed about 40% of the remaining So2Pure and so far its been great. So I used about 40ml to do my 2007 Corolla
 
What about using a dry thermal fogger like the Unsmoke electro-gen. It's originally designed for smoke damaged homes but have heard of it being placed in cars for about 5-10 seconds and then letting the fog do its cleaning thing. I'm tempted to buy one in place of an ozone machine. They run on ebay for only $150-200. What do yall think? Will this suffice for odor removal?
 
I will probably be doing 2 cars and 1 Suburban.

Insurance will be paying for it, but I am not sure how that works since I am not a business and only detail for friends and family. If anyone can fill me in on insurance jobs I would appreciate it.
Also, how much should I charge?
 
ThirdgenTa said:
I will probably be doing 2 cars and 1 Suburban.

Insurance will be paying for it, but I am not sure how that works since I am not a business and only detail for friends and family. If anyone can fill me in on insurance jobs I would appreciate it.
Also, how much should I charge?
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I've never done a job for something that insurance will be paying for. Here in MA insurance companies will not deal with a company that isn't legit. Since you typically have to bill them and they will send you a check.

And now that you say that insurance is paying I'm going to assume this is smoke damage from a fire? I"ve never dealt with that type of damage before, so I'm not sure what to suggest. You may have a hard time getting that smell out.

As far as pricing, I think it will depend on where you are. For something like I'd probably quote $150-$200 just for the interior. But it depends on your location.
 
Jon-Don has some great products to get rid of smoke smell. They are a janitorial type business but I get a product there call odorcide to use when my dog decides to use the floor as her toilet.

Jenn
 
Read this post:

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/products-guides/32472-ozone-generator-does-really-work.html

Btw, growing up, my dad owned (and still does) an apartment maintenance company. The two smells that were damned near impossible to get rid of were smoke damage and a dead body that wasn't immediately detected. IME, the only way to deal with smoke damage is either with a commercial fogger or an ozone generator. There are far too many "nooks and crannies" in a car to ever hope that anything other than a commercial product would work.

Do yourself a favor and research renting an ozone generator and be guaranteed that it will work. Otherwise you could find yourself purchasing a significant amount of products that are really designed to deal with "everyday" odors.

Just my two cents.
 
After you bomb, or do an ozone generator you still need to clean the vents- spray some through the inlets by the wiper blades with AC running on regular, then spray some through the inlet under the passenger side dash with AC running on MAX, or recirculate. It will help. But depending on how bad it it, and how sensitive you are to it, you may never totally get rid of the smell, especially on hot days when the car is cooking in the sun. You have to literally scrape the residue with a strong degreaser wherever you can find it (many people say it's the nicotine, but I think it's the tar that remains everywhere in a yellow film). If you can steam clean the headliner, it will help- it always seems the smoke residue is heaviest above the driver's seat, and usually right around the A-post and above driver's door window- but sometimes it will be soaked in above the rear view mirror too. If you steam or shampoo, you'll see the brown water eventually start to clear up, and that tells you that you're making progress. Good luck!

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In case anyone didn't read the whole thread, this is smoke from a fire that occured at a house while the cars were in the garage. Not cigarettes. The girl says that the smell is not that strong and that they still drive the cars while an air freshener is helping.
I would love to use an Ozone Generator, but unfortunately I do not do enough cars to justify it and I don't get paid enough for it either. I would lose mone either way. That's why I am looking for whatever product is good and that I can spray on the surfaces after i detail the inside.
 
ThirdgenTa said:
In case anyone didn't read the whole thread, this is smoke from a fire that occured at a house while the cars were in the garage. Not cigarettes. The girl says that the smell is not that strong and that they still drive the cars while an air freshener is helping.
I would love to use an Ozone Generator, but unfortunately I do not do enough cars to justify it and I don't get paid enough for it either. I would lose mone either way. That's why I am looking for whatever product is good and that I can spray on the surfaces after i detail the inside.
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I read it, hence my answer. Smoke from a fire is far more insidious than cigarette smoke. My point is that renting an ozone generator would probably be cheaper and far more effective than any spray product. It will be damned near impossible to spray the product in all places necessary to completely eliminate the fire smoke odor.

Good luck.
 
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