how to get the smoke stench out of the interior?

[beater truck]

Hi everyone,

I believe this is my first post on here, hopefully it's a good one.

I just picked up a '94 x-cab short bed 4x4 silverado( xcsb)? today. It's in pretty good shape overall, but on the way home I noticed how bad the smoke stench is inside of the truck. I'm not a smoker, so I guess I'm failrly sensitive to it. I like the truck and I want to keep it, but I need to be able to get rid of the odor. I have asthma, so something like this can be a real issue for me.

The other weird thing this truck does is, wehn you first start it up, or after you shut it down, there's something inside of the HVAC box that makes a loud 'bang, bang,bang sound for about a minute, then it stops. Anyone have any ideas so that I won't tear apart have of the interior chasing my tail?

Thanks for any help.

[rainman318]

Start by shampooing the carpet and seats you will probably need to recover the headliner since thats where most of the smoke went. You could try to frebreze(SC?) the hell out of it first and see what that does. The noise is a vent door motor gone bad.

[Texas1836]

http://odoban.com/OdoBan_Odor_Eliminator.html

Will take the stink out of anything. My Stepdad used the stuff when he used to do automotive upholstery.

Thomas

[1LOW4X4]

swap the seats with leather, re-do the headliner, febreze the **** out of the carpet.

Do those trucks have the interior air filters? If so change them.


The jute underneath carpet will hold smells too. You can buy it for cheap, it is that thick grayish pad underneath carpet. remove carpet and cut to fit, it'll help.

[Pete-FWA]

Don't forget to run whatever deodorant you're going to use through the ventilation system as well.

Obviously, clean and scrub every part of the interior you can touch. Headliners are the exception because that material is very sensitive. You can use a dry, clinging foam on it.
Often, though, it's faster and most effective to have that material replaced.

Smoke film and odor will be on both sides of the door panel, in the seat foam, in the ventilation components, in the carpet padding (as mentioned) and all over the thing. The more cleaning and ventilating you do, the better.

I'll second Texas1836's suggestion on OdoBan. It is a very effective product.

[beater truck]

thanks for the ideas, and the mention of a door (flap) motor gone bad. I can feel the recirculation flap motor vibration when it makes the noise. It doesn't look like too much fun to get that motor out, but I'll figure out something. I spent most of the day getting the vent control section of the HVAC box to reattatch to the portion that has the heater core and evap core. I finally figured out that I could basically split the core side of the box enough to get the vent side to "lock" back together. It looks like someone replaced the heater core, and managed to botch up eveything they touched under the dash.

[Joe]

There is not fix all product out there for this project, it requires good old fashioned hard work.

A GOOD interior detail is in order. Pulling AC vents out of the dash, pulling the seats to get to the carpet, every square inch of plastic trim and upolstry needs to be CLEANED. I use Simple Green and a detail brush on all plastic items.

The carpets and cloth seats will require a STEAM cleaning.

The headliner can be cleaned, replacing is always a last resort. Use simple green on a damp (not soaked) clean towel and rub the headliner gently.