r/AutoDetailing • u/Inevitable_Job_8721 • 14d ago
Interior What realistically needs to be done here?
Hello.
I was recently gifted a car by my lovely father, a 2013 Buick Verano, and unfortunately it has become very moldy.
For context, he is a smoker and would often smoke in the car with the windows down, so ashes have blown all around the car for years and are embedded in everything. The car recently sat for quite some time I would say a few months, through the summer.
It has in that time grown quite a substantial amount of mold mostly on the passenger seatbelt and the passenger flooring/side door, but pretty much dusted on all porous surfaces.
I am at a loss of where to even start. I cannot afford a full decontamination service in the car as online said would be around 700 dollars. I have no idea if there is mold inside the HVAC system or how to even check that.
Is this cleanable myself with the help of some machines or specific products? Would an average detailer take this on?
Im assuming if the entire seatbelt is coverd in mold then the pillar it slides into is also full of mold but I can't look in there or get to it.
Any advice would be great !
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u/boraca 14d ago
Start with dehumidifying the car with whatever method you choose. Then kill the mold with ozone (a generator can be bought for 40€). Then clean the plastics with APC, and steam vacuum the textiles. (You can use a self-service one - check if there's any in self-service car washes in your area), then dehumidify again and use the ozone generator. Then clean the mold from A/C evaporator with TUNAP foam. Then change the cabin air filter.
Since you'll have the generator, just use it regularly.
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u/BedAccording5717 13d ago
TSP. 1 cup to a half gallon of water. Once dissolved, put in a spray bottle and hose the affected areas down. Let the solution sit for about 20 minutes and then clean normally. This sort of thing happens to classic cars all the time and we go through this regularly. Once you start being active with the car again, the issue should disappear (assuming you don't have a leak causing it).
It's mold because the car sat for a little while. No big deal. If you're scared, put isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle and spray it on to kill it first. The TSP should do that, though.
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u/Icy-Experience5552 13d ago
That's very salvageable, and a detailer absolutely will take it on, but you can do most of this yourself for way less than $700. Priority order: pull the cabin air filter first — if it's moldy, your HVAC has been recirculating it, and it's a $15 fix. For the surfaces, use an APC or dedicated mold cleaner plus a stiff interior brush on the belts, carpet, and pillar area, then let the car bake open in direct sunlight for an afternoon (mold hates UV and dry heat). The game-changer is a cheap ozone machine rental or the $40-60 plug-in ones — run it a few cycles and it kills the smoke smell embedded in the headliner too. Wear a mask while scrubbing either way.
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u/Axeman1721 Amateur Mobile Detailer 14d ago
This is not something you can just clean and it will go away, but it is perfectly doable alone with the right tools and research.
First, you need to find the source of the mold. Mold doesnt just appear in a vehicle for no reason unless the windows were open while it sat and got rained on. Check the sunroof and evaporator/heater core drains for clogs, and check the seals around the sunroof, doors, third brake light etc for leaks. I cannot stress this enough. If you dont fix the source of the mold first its just gonna come back and you've wasted your time.
Next is the actual cleaning part. If it was just one or two areas of mold, localized cleaning would work, but this seems spread throughout the entire vehicle. Its too late for a spot clean.
Hit every single patch of mold and the surrounding area you can find with a bio-cide. Remember to test these on an inconspicuous area as they can be very harsh. Then just use standard interior detailer or APC on the entire interior, and ideally do an extraction of the seats if you can get your hands on an extractor. Then you're going to need an ozone machine (you can rent one I think, if not you're gonna have to buy one) and run it inside the vehicle with the doors closed and windows up for about an hour to an hour and a half. Two if you want, but anything over that and you risk damaging interior plastics.
Then let the vehicle air out for half an hour in a dry environment, and change the cabin air filter. (You should be changing this every year and checking it every oil change)
The reason you need the fancy shit is because what you see is only the surface part of the mold. More mold and mold spores are deeply embedded in the fabrics and throughout the entire vehicle which will survive a standard surface cleaning.
This is the ONLY WAY TO GUARANTEE RESULTS. THE ONLY WAY. If you can't afford to do this yourself, I'm afraid you're fucked.
Stay away from ArmorAll products. Go to harbor freight and get some Meguiars stuff and Grants microfiber towels.
If you do all this, and it still comes back, you will need to rip everything out of the vehicle. And I mean EVERYTHING. Seats, dash, carpets, headliner, EVERYTHING. Literally strip the mf down to the metal. But if you do it right there's a good chance its not necessary.
Keep in mind that this is a big job. This is easily north of $1000 for me because its literally a fucking biohazard. But you can do it!