Against my better judgement, I let a friend of mine borrow my car earlier today, on the stipulation that he do nothing idiotic therein. While he succeeded in returning my car in one piece (in and of itself a noteworthy accomplishment), the one piece he returned now smells like the Marijuanamobile. The asshole must have smoked enough pot in there to give an elephant the munchies.
I have already reamed him out to what I consider a sufficient degree, and I have drenched the interior with the better part of a bottle of lilac-scented Febreze. This has had the effect of making my car smell not unlike the dorm room of a college student who thinks three metric tons of incense will cover his tracks. This is not the impression I care to cultivate in any passengers and/or police officers that get within ten yards of my vehicle.
So…any suggestions on what else to use? Or am I just doomed to smell the results of my stupid decision until it’s time to trade the old girl in?
You know, it just now occurred to me that this thread might not be looked upon too kindly by the Powers That Be. I’m emailing a couple moderators right now to see if this thread will be allowed to live. If I’m over the line, allow me to offer a preemptory apology.
There is absolutely nothing that will get tobacco or marijuana smoke out of a car interior. You have to remove all the seats, carpets, fabric trim, and HVAC ducts, and burn them.
He owes you about $1500. That’s the difference between a non-smoker’s and a smoker’s car.
I had the same problem with my car, except with cigarette smoke, and I posted a thread last year asking for help. After I had baking soda’d it a couple times and Febrezed it to within an inch of its life, it had lost a lot of the smell. Now I can’t really smell it at all, but I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve been conditioned to ignore it, that the smell just wore off by itself after a few months, or that the treatment actually worked.
I also made sure to clean out any places (trays, handle-pockets) that could have accumulated ashes, but since for you it was a short-term deal, that’s probably not much of an issue.
I should mention that the smell was never overwhelming, as it sounds like it is in your case.
Maybe you could rent one of those steam-cleaner thingies, and clean the upholstery and carpets with it? I’m just guessing here. It seems as though one day of smoking it up should’ve only left the smell on the surfaces, not permeating the seat cushions or whatever. Good luck Roland.
Pot smell goes away a lot quicker than tobacco smell, at least in my experience. You’d need to smoke a dozen or so bowls in a car to get the stink residue of a single cigarette.
I’d buy a couple of those hanging car freshener thingies and leave the car windows down a crack for the next several days.
The trick is to spray something through the intake of the air conditioner/heater. The smell lurks in there forever. Years ago someone told me if you used any work cars drive with the AC off and the window open and no-one will notice you smoked in it. She turned out to be right.
I forgot, the place I used to rent cheap cars from kept their cars smelling good by pumping ozone through them. Apparently it is a common trick so maybe some rental place or dealership nearby will do it for a price. You can buy cigarette lighter versions pretty cheap. Maybe they work?
I have had unbelievable results with a product called Natures Miracle. It is a pet odor remover slash cleaner
I have 5 dogs so when we have the occasional accident or one gets skunked we use this product. I have also used it on fabrics such as couches
It is really amazing. It has no perfume odor but it can take the stink off of anything. It seems to just neutralize the smell.
You know how you sometimes find a plastic dish in the fridge that you forgot about?
I ran across one of these and I thought I was going to have to throw it away it smelled so bad. I rinsed it out with this stuff and the odor was instantly gone It freaked me out it was so fast
If you used this in a spray bottle I think it would work on you car.
It is pricy and I can only find it at PetsMart but if you ever use it you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
Bingo, but Lynn okayed it, so I guess it lives. Good thing too, there’s some good advice here. Thanks to all.
The Febreze didn’t take, so I’ll try the baking soda and air fresheners next. Failing that, Ozium and/or carpet cleaner. I’m hoping I don’t have to resort to getting anything professionally done, don’t ask, but if worst comes to worst I suppose it’d be better than smelling half-baked every time I drive anywhere.
Not directly. Thankfully that happened a couple days before I lent the car to my friend. It did, however, factor into the strength of my current desire to get the smell out – if it’d been a couple days difference either way, that speeding stop would have been far more annoying than it already was (I’d be clean, of course, but the cop would still have probable cause to search the entire vehicle, and it’d be just my luck that the idiot would leave something in the car that would constitute possession).
Roland, go to a novelty store and buy a bunch of pot leaf shaped air fresheners…Then get a greatful dead bumper sticker…Then find a high school kid with bloodshot eyes and alot of money to buy the car…
You have to treat all the surfaces, just not the fabric you can see. This is where is gets hard, because so much of the car is under dashboards, under seats…the ducts. … And then the cushions under the covers, etc. Plus there is the truck, the overhead.
While some products work, it is hard to be really thorough with them.
