ALEV8

I occasionally get a bad smell from my AC and my dealer wanted to charge me five or $600 to do some AC core refresher which I refused as I have owned this the car maybe two months and it was a CPO to deal with occasional stink? 30k mi on it.

Also I get in the car and seat is never quite correct. Press 1, and the seat moves forward to final position but only if I do this…..at a loss here….?

narbie99

my ac stinks too. I've replaced the filter and it made no difference.

ThomasWShea

not porsche specific advice but on a lot of cars you may have a drain plugged. you may have a dirty evaporator coil that needs cleaning. how to clean it can be a trick and is car to car. not sure how you would access it to clean it in the cayenne. when i had cars parked outside i occasionally had these kinds of issues. parking in a garage i have never had an issue because there is just a lower exposure to debris so drains tend to stay clear. and things tend to stay dry so the any mold that could grow on the coil and smell doesn’t grow.

chassis

MB has dirty sock smell in the AC. Common.

German car companies design using common approaches and buy components from the same suppliers, therefore have similar characteristics in performance, e.g. dirty sock smell from the HVAC.

Root cause is wet evaporator core that doesn’t fully dry out, resulting in mildew growth and perceived as objectionable aroma.

Wet evaporator core is a design flaw from the car companies. Not plugged evaporator drain. This can be 100% confirmed by doing the “cleaning” procedure and observing the cleaning medium draining from the not plugged evaporator drain. Cleaning is a treatment and not a permanent corrective action.

Ironman88

You might try replacing your cabin filter with a fresh one that has activated charcoal.

It's helped in my cars.

retom

An unpleasant smell in the air conditioning is a common phenomenon, especially in older cars. This is the result of moisture condensing in the air conditioning system and mold growing.
There are many chemicals with which you can quickly and cheaply clean your air conditioning yourself.
Here is one of them:

ALEV8

Has anyone here actually used the SONAX fogger method? That looks fairly terrifying. What about running the heat for a while in the car to dry out the coil and system?

johnstoy

This might be a difference between what settings are programmed into your key versus position # 1. They can be different and the car will set the set to the position stored for the key every time you get in. Not sure which exact option you have but you may need to reset the key stored position: press "set" and then the key button when the seat is where you want.