My treadmill needs a shower

In My Humble Opinion
1

After much searching and a few false starts, I’ve finally gotten a treadmill of my very own. Going to the gym was just getting too boring (and expensive) for me. Last night, I brought it home and set it up in my bedroom. I brush the dust off it and beam happily at my new self-torture device. Then I realize it is…stinky. Smells like sweat, I guess. That’s to be expected, I say, and break out the all-purpose cleaner and paper towels. After a thorough scrubbing down, I retire to the kitchen to eat dinner. An hour or so later, I go back into the bedroom and…it’s still smelly. It’s not overpowering, but it’s very noticeable. It’s a sweaty male smell. Sadly, not an appealing sweaty male smell.
I resign myself to sleeping in a stinky bedroom, and place a candle on a burner in hopes that maybe the clean cotton molecules will overpower the sweat molecules. Nope - this morning I awoke to…cotton smelling stink.

I’ve browsed several ‘household cleaning tips and tricks’ threads, but no mention of getting smell out of plastic. Any advice, Dopers? Has anyone encountered this problem before?

2

Denatured alcohol.

Best bet.

3

I wonder if this thread will “take off”.

4

Febreze works for me :dubious:

5

Fabreze is the shit. It got 4 years worth of chain-smoking smell out of my used SUV when I bought it. Other things to try would be one of those high-powered citrus cleaners they sell at hardware stores.

6

Well, I scrubbed every inch with alcohol this evening. The odor is still there, albeit fainter. (Or maybe the alcohol killed my sense of smell!)
I can’t stand Febreze, but I’m willing to give it a shot if that’s what it takes. If no relief by the weekend, I’ll make the trip to Target and get myself a bottle!
Thanks for the tips.

7

Are you cleaning any of the insides? Can you get to the insides?

Seems like sweat would drip on to the track, then inside/under the machine where the track goes. Have you tried saturating the track as it goes around and getting the stank out from the inside?

8

Try some sort of enzyme-based cleaner.
But if you put it on the treadmill and it takes off, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

9

Yeah, I thought of that. I did my best to clean underneath and between the moving belt and the inside plastic. I don’t want to try taking anything apart for fear of not getting it back together correctly.

Wait, I thought it was only a plane that takes off on a treadmill…