How can I get this out of my car? I've tryed covering it up with stuff, temp fix. I want to rid the car of the smell, period.

 

Wash all the cloth surfaces with a good automotive upholstery cleaner. Then a good febreezing should eliminate anything you've missed.

Alternately take it to a detailing shop, explain the situation to them and cough up the $100 for a good interior cleaning.

 

All it takes is time and patience.

 

http://www.autopia-carcare.com/meg-g-2310.html

This too

 

as canadianmofo said, use an auto. upholstery cleaner on your carpets, floor mats, and if you have them, cloth seats, work the cleaner well w/ the brush on your carpets and seats, let dry for a little, then vaccum

 

Might want to get some sort of odor illiminator and spray it into the airvents (at the base of the windshield) and run it through all the settings (windshield, face, feet etc.)

 

You may have to take all of your seats and carpet out of the car and wash them... Cigarette smell is hard to take out... Also, you can spray Ozonium in the defrost and vents... they sell it at Wal-Marts... I used it back in my dealership days to get rid of the new car smell for people... yes, there are folks that don't like the smell... Also, you could put good quality dryer sheets in the car. Arm & Hammer on a plate under a seat could also help absorb the smell... It works in the fridge, why not in your car.

 

After cleaning the interior, buy some Ozium to remove the cigarette smell.

 

Ozium is the shiznit. I use it in the car, at home, bathroom, stinking co-workers office, etc

 

I had that, and did this: http://autopia.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=43947. Worked absolutely amazingly. Took me about 4 hours though cuz I took all my seats out.

 

Not to repeat what everyone else said, but the only way to get the smell out completely really is to steam extract, wash or shampoo all of the cloth in your car -- this can't be stressed enough. The headliner is actually the biggest absorber of cigarette smoke and other strange smells. It is harder to extract in my opinion, but definately necessary.

For customers with cigarette smell in their cars I use a product called After Fire One-Shot which has sort of an incense smell to it. It is also good for mildew and other stuff you don't want to smell in your car. I'm not sure how it compares to Ozium because I've never used that, but an interesting feature it has is the ability to spray while you leave it inside the car and close the doors. That way, it "bombs" the interior and gets into the headliner to prevent the smell from coming back.

And of course, like others said, its also good to spray in the airvents outside of the car in front of the windshield while the car is on and AC is blasting.

 

How do you guys shampoo the headliner?

 

steam extraction is the way to go. ive tried upholstry cleaners in my car when i bought it(it was used), and it really didnt do anything for me(maybe i didnt try hard enough)

 

The last car I worked on was a nightmare. The owners smoked in it all the time. This was the process I used that made the car smell 100x better:

1) Remove floor mats and every peice of debris from the car
2) Vaccuum and Shampoo carpet and headliner(Be careful on this one)
3) Take degreaser (diluted ofcourse) to every surface area inside
4) Clean leather with Leather Cleaner thoroughly
5) Spray down all vents inside the car with Lysol (including exterior intake vent)
6) Clean all inside windows
7) Condition all leather and dash
8) Vaccuum and Shampoo floor mats
9) Hit every "small area" spots with degreaser (trim around sunroof)
10) Leave dryer sheets under front seats

All in all this process takes awhile, but it should clear up alot of smells. The only other step I wish I took was aquiring an Ozone machine and allowing the car to sit with that running for awhile. That will permanetly kill all odors inside. Areas like the sunroof trim often get forgotten, but will turn your cloth yellow from the tar once you clean them. Smoke does a lot of damage, so it takes a lot of work to recover from the smell.

 

^ what blue said. Temporarily you can use one of those california scent cans. Those things are mad potent

 

One of my buddies bought a 1999 Monte Carlo from a insurance salesmam who smoked and drank coffee. You can imagine what that interior smelled like. He bought the car for like $1500 with 110,000 miles on it.

He pretty much took out all the interior and blasted it with the hose. He took out the seats and used uphosltry cleaner on them, as for the carpets, like I said he put it out on the d-way. And hosed it down with soap and water, let it dry out and then installed it back in and thru in like 3 lil trees, new car scent. Car smells GREAT !!!, it alot of work.... but this got the smell out completely.

 

All of the above are great ideas, especially steam cleaning. If you have access to one, you can use an ozone machine. My bro used one in his truck that smelt of pets and it helped tons. Took awhile but it worked. He does flood restoration so he has all sorts of cool stuff.

 

Great thread I have had the same problem for a while now.

 

a lot of good ides for me to try, i recently stopped smoking, n when i get in my car in stinks a little, i want it to go away....i ll try some of these teqniques

 

Take it to the professional detailer, I pay about $100-$125 once a year, and wash it myself all the time and wax it in may and august. My interiors always smell/look good, and I had a 95 with 192,000 miles which I was able to get $4000 for because the outside looked gorgeous. It is definately worth it, espcially if you know someone who works for a dealership, or go where you bought your car and ask them where they take their cars to get them cleaned up for retail. It's really worth it for me, especially since I'm kind of new to detailing.

 

try dry rubbing some baking soda into the cloth seats and letting it sit for an hour or so before vacuuming.

 

whatever you do, do it yourself. My friend works in a car wash and they do detailing. Trust me, you don't want to see what they do. I've seen an interior floor carpet pressure washed. Since then, I told him i would never give him my car. Some good cleaning products(stain removers and odor removers) a hose(mist setting), wet dry vac, pale some tide or whatevr u use and a hard bristle brush. Trust me, been doing it myself since i was 17. I used to do a civic 4 dr in 2 hrs top to bottom, like new. I used to smoke and my parents didn't and I used to hear it all the time. So a good cleaning was due every spring(sometimes fall). Was all fabric and fabreeze for a finishing touch.

 

Take out your seats, mats, etc and shampoo after spraying any spots with spot shot. There is some stuff my mom had called Odor Ban it works great and smells good. Cleaning the headliner you can use cleaning wipes from armor all, if you don't want to shampoo it. It will take alot of them but they work great to take out stains and clean surfaces.

 

I'll piggy back off everyone by saying do the above by removing what you can from the car and cleaning it thoroughly and wiping everything down, but also trying the product(s) here I found on detailnet.com, they like they may get the job done (I'm considering picking up a few cans to maintain my car as I don't smoke and rarely drink in it)

The product is similar to "fogging" your house, but an aerosol for you car that goes through all your vents and what not. Wouldn't hurt to check it out....

http://www.detailnet.com/shop/customer/home.php?cat=27

 

um the only thing i would reccomend is to stop smoking in the car, also drive with the windows open and the sunroof open all windows down etc for an extended period of time

 

I agree. I use Ozium in the G35. Ran the AC full blast on recirc and fresh air. Sprayed the Ozium in the front of the intake of each. Recirc in the pass side footwell and the fresh air vent is on the cowl outside the car. G35. Ran the AC for about 5 min. Every once in awhile I'd spray more in there.

After two applications 2-3 days apart, no odor from the vents. Works great

 

When i want cigarette smoke/smell out of my car i usually get the febreeze spray the car down and drive the car around with all the window's down. I also have a " my shaldan" air freshener that gets rid of it really well when sitting in the sun.

 

IMHO the Febreeze worked "okay". I also didn't want to mask the smell with a freshener.

The Ozium sprays out in a really fine mist. It also has different active ingredients than Febreeze

 

my car reeked of cigarettes, so what i did was i went to the store and bought simple green and diluted it 50/50, with water that i boiled, (do not over heat the water!!!) then i took it out side and scrubbed the floor mats, and carpet, use the mixture freely (make watery mess) then i took the good old shop vac and vacuumed up the excess water, and left the max out side with the windows open, when it was dry i sprayed febreeze all over the head liner. also i suggest that you spay the rug with the frebreeze so you can nullify the smell of the simple green, then put the windows up then voilą it smells like brand new.

also buy a new car smell air freshener