Smoke smell removal
 

Is there any way to remove the smell of a previous owner smoking for years in an otherwise very nice car? I'm not a smoker and won't buy a car like that unless I knew I could have the smell removed. Nor do I want the constant smell of a coverup fragrance. Any ideas other than skipping the cars that smell? (That's what I've been doing.....)

there is some spray stuff I bought at pep boys that worked pretty good. It was in a lime green spray bottle. I think it was made by turtle wax.
Unfortunately it recently fell off its shelf and the bottle broke, at least now my garbage can smells good.

Febreze or baking soda might help eliminate odors. We've used Febreze when we couldn't get a non-smoking motel room.

Doc

Ozone treatments work well. Body shops have these treatments done on stolen recovery cars for insurance companies when a non-smoker gets their car stolen and gets cigarette smell (Among other smells) into them by the crack head thieves. Any good reputable detail shop can hook you up.

As mentioned above, I use febreze when I cant get a non smoking hotel room. I spray it on everything.


Kirk

After I quit smoking I bombed the passenger compartment a few times with Ozium spray air sanitizer and spent most of an afternoon repeatedly shampooing all the interior surfaces until the water in my vacuum cleaner was no longer brown (it took a while and included removing both front seats). If there wasn't a burn mark on the carpeting between the driver's seat and door you'd never be able to tell that someone had actually smoked in the car. But I think the one thing I had going for me was that I never once used the ashtray for lit cigarettes. If the PO has then all bets are off.

I will be hard to get rid of it in the air cond system. The film will be all over the fans, ducts and vents. I would only buy a smoked in car if I smoked or was stripping the interior for a track car. The up side is you should get a good discount on the car! So did you find a 993?

Thanks for all the responses. Jim, there is a very nice adventurine green coupe with a Tip at the BMW store, but it smelled so bad, I had to make the test drive very short. I've never been in a car that smelled that bad. Kind of like the Seinfeld episode.....I think the Marlboro man gave Joe Camel a ride in it....for about 10 years. I turned it down, too bad because it was pretty nice, 997 5- spoke wheels, XM radio, 61k miles. $33k

Many years ago I had a business in a building where a fire broke out. Much of the contents of my offices were salvagable, but I had to get rid of the odor from the files of paper and the books.

Service Master had a lot of experience in fire recovery/restoration. They sealed off a room with my office stuff in it, and used a machine to generate ozone in the sealed room. To this day I have books that show evidence of the fire, but absolutely no odor.

I suppose that Ozium is a spray can attempt at the same thing?

One possible problem with this: The vent kit for our distributors is there to vent ozone from the distributor enclosure, because built-up ozone breaks down the rubber in the connecting belt. I don't know what effect a day in an ozone envirinment would have on a whole car. Maybe not so good?

smoke smell
 

you need to look for that ozone machine. i belive dealerships have thaem as my wife purchased a toyota and it smells like new but when i went to install new stereo you could see the nicotine film under the panels but as i tried to smell it it did not have any odor. there are companies out there that do it but i think it takes like 1-2 days left in the car to rid odor. worth the money. look in the yellow pages under fire and smoke removal or call a porsche dealer ship and ask.

i wonder if you buy that unit from the sharper image will it do the same thing, THE IONIC BREEZE, you could leave it pluged in and let it stay in the car for 2 days and that might work. then when you are done put in the house to clean the air.

If you find one and want to put it on the lift to check it out give me a call. Are you coming to the Central Florida Exotic get together saturday at the same place we met last week?

Frigi-Fresh
 

For the A/C & ventilation system, spray some BG Frigi-Fresh through it. Works wonders.