mwy23

hey all,

i purchased a new (to me) s2000 and the previous owner smoked in the car. it has a hardtop as well. so... i was wondering if anyone has gone through the trouble of removing the smell from the car. the car only has ~4000 miles on it so far, and i am unsure how many of those miles are smoking miles.

thanks in advance!!!

mike

Ubetit

The first thing I would have done is get the carpets cleaned. That is the biggest culprit when it comes to keeping smells. You also want to do a complete interior detail. Clean and protect the leather and vinyl. The smell may also linger in your vents if he had the hardtop and windows up all the time. The liner in the hardtop is also another place to clean.

Unfortunately sometimes you can't always remove it 100%.

mwy23

thanks. 90% removed is better than stale cigarette smell.

Conedodger

I would start by cleaning all the "hardparts" with Fantastic or something similar. I would then shampoo the carpets with a sprayfoam shampoo. Vacuum the carpets well with a shop vac when dry. Then I would spray Fabreeze into the carpets and mats. Leather cleaner and conditioner for the seats too.

Clean the windows completely too. Nothing like brown tar smearing the windows on a dark night.

animeS2K

Don't forget to remove the seats to clean the carpets! It's only 4 bolts/seat (2 12mm, 2 14mm). It's also much easier to clean ALL parts of the seats and the rest of the "hardparts" when the seats are out.

If you REALLY wanted to get aggressive with it, you could pull the carpets and clean them better outside the car - easier to scrub, easier to work more product and rinse the product out - a pressure washer does wonders (on a relatively low pressure, fan spray setting). If you have it available, Meguiar's All Purpose Cleaner is a great interior cleaner - cut 10:1 for interior "hardparts" and 3:1 for mats, 5:1 for carpets.

Good luck with it.

wanabe

good tips above... the only thing i would add is to be sure to change the fresh air filter (cant remember what its called right now)-
even though it filters air coming in, often it is "contaminated"

also a few sunny days of top down driving will help- the only part that this wont get to is the inside of the top... but that is covered above.

DustySlider

Fabreeze. That will do wonders for you alone. This stuff is magic!

mwy23

thanks for the input guys.

i actually removed the seats, and put some baking soda all over the carpets and let it sit overnight. i still get a wiff of the cigarette smell sometimes, but i think that's due to the smell that may have been absorbed into the air vents. baking soda has an incredibly fresh, clean smell... so i also packed my cupholder half full w/ baking soda, trying to emulate the "baking soda in the refrigerator" thing.

so far, so good. i still need to wipe down the hard stuff and the windows, along w/ cleaning/conditioning the leather/vinyl. also have the softtop and hardtop to work on.

thanks for the recommendations. please keep them coming.

Silver_S2000

Fresh air filter ='s cabin air filter...you can buy them at www.hardtopguy.com for very cheap...I know..I just ordered one..the previous owner never changed it...and it's logged over 44k miles ...I looked at it and was in pure shock.

~Cody~

animeS2K

Apparently, the smell likes to stick to glass, as mentioned above. Also, if you've got some febreeze or other worthwhile odor eliminator, you might try spraying that into the cabin intake with the vents on high - if you remove the air cleaner like you were going to change it, then spray into there, that might very well get the vents - not the engine intake, mind you! The little filter is under the plastic near the windshield, near the battery, under the hood... see this thread: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=145495

You may also see about removing the center pieces of the seats and spraying down the backsides of those with an odor eliminator - the foam parts will likely hold the smells pretty well.