Worst thing spilled in your Prius? (and how you cleaned it)

Your talking about the trunk area right?

Are you talking about the removable carpet in the trunk area? Did it seep under it? If so, is it on the removable part that opens up to the secret trunk compartment?

If so, I'd take both the carpet and the plastic cover and soak em in water and rinse them out. If the smell is still there, try using a mixture of water and baking soda (I heard it removes odors) and scrubbing it in there and letting it soak in it for a bit.

 

A year or so ago, I spilled about a half pint of sour milk on the back seat carpeting. I didn't discover it until it was pretty ripe. The neighbors even said the twice weekly garbage truck smelled better that the Prius.

I finally went to Safeway and got their rental carpet shampooer. 'Natch, it wouldn't fit, so I used the hose attachments. After two or three thorough cleanings in a row, there was still the lingering stench. Time for the heavy artillery.

I lilterally flooded the area in the back seat floor, carpet still installed, to a depth of about 1/4 inch. Then I sucked it up with the carpet shapooer, now doubling as a wet vac, making certain that there was as little water left as I could. I did this probably three or four times -- once with Natures Miracle, the cat pee remover. Granted, it wasn't cat pee, but I figured it WAS organic, and hey, nothing to lose at that point.

Once I had the carpet rinsed so there was no smell, I put the car in the garage, cracked the windows, and put our basement dehumidifier in the car and ran it all night, and again the next day. Once it was thoroughly dry, I vacuumed it out, squirted a little Febreeze on it, and there's not a hint of odor left.

I figger it was the repeated flooding and rinsing that made the difference. But you never can tell.

Dan

 

My wife and I were running through Starbucks before we drove the 3 hours back to our apartment. Lucky me, the cup they handed me was defective (per their admission later) and it spilled all over my lap, seat, center console, and floor. Unfortunately, the best we could do as far as cleaning is concerned was mop it up with napkins until we got home.

 

The worst I spill is coffee, but the same cleaning technique I use can be used for about anything in any car (and some furniture and carpet).

I have a small pump sprayer that I fill with warm water and carpet cleaner. I like to use the Pet Odor Removing cleaner, since it smells better. The other supply is a source of clear, clean water. I use the garden hose for rinse water, but if that's a bit much you can turn it down or use some other source. For tools I use a wet/dry shopvac and a stiff brush.

I usually clean each car when I purchase it, when I'm selling it, or when it gets too bad to live with. It's good to have a clean car.

Vacuum the entire car (or area to be cleaned). Spray the soapy water in a small area (1'x1' or better) and scrub thoroughly. Vacuum up the soapy water. Spray clean rinse water on the area. Vacuum up the rinse water. Repeat as/if required. Go to the next area. I don't do whole-car except in the summer when I can roll the windows down for an extended period to dry things out well. A smaller area wouldn't require that much ventilation.

The folks I purchased my CRX from had a LARGE dog with white hair. The best way I found to remove the dog hair was to ignore it during the vacuum, wash, and rinse phases (it was mostly gone by then), and then focus on the rest of it while it was still damp. I used one of those rubber brushes with a lot of tiny rubber fingers. With my vacuum nozzle sucking and the rubber fingers teasing out the hair, it didn't take long to have it all gone.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to use the garden hose in a Prius on a large scale, but the concept on a smaller scale would still be useful.

 

quarts of beer, and used a rag on the interstate driving at high speed to clean the spill

 

...whilst being pursued by the State Highway Patrol.

 

Ohio

 

I had a 44oz drink in the front cup holder that dumped all over the floor. I have rubber floor mats and it cleaned up pretty easily. I was actually surprised that the coke cleaned up pretty well, almost like the carpet had stain guard on it. I also had a bottle of Ultima Paint Guard Plus in a bag in the trunk and it leaked out all over the rug. The car smelled like grease, but I was able to clean the mat. The bottle of stuff cost me 75 bucks, and I wrote the company I bought it from and they sent me a new bottle. Very satisfied.

 

I spilt compost/manure in my Prius. I tried laying down the rear seat and hanging a tarp from the coat hooks to create an enclosure for hauling loose landscaping supplies. It worked, mostly, although some spilled out as I was shoveling it into the back of my Prius.

I had bought and installed heavy duty waterproof seat covers and put carpet scraps on the floor so clean up was straightforward.

 

Help !! I spilled an entire protein shake (milk & raw egg) into the air vent on top of the glove compartment. I've soaked up all of the drink that fell onto the carpet (yay - pet cleaner) but how do I clean inside the air vent? As I was driving to work this morning, some of the shake rolled from the passenger side vent to the driver's side and dripped on my right (accelerator) foot. Yuck, how do I remove the remnants of the protein shake from the air vent before it molds under the dashboard?

 

That is going to be worse than a kipper tied to the exhaust.

Sell the car quickly.

 

mikala365,

All the info you need is in here:

http://priuschat.com/forums/audio-electronics/52689-how-do-you-remove-front-right-vent-cover.html

http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/pwe/

All the little hold-in tabs are plastic, I would do this only after the cabin is
well warmed.

Gather your courage, and just pull straight out while wiggling slightly
up-and-down, and side-to-side.

Some folks have reported that if one of the tabs gets broken, the vent cover
still remounts tightly.

Hope this helps.

 

Rokeby - You Rock!!!

THANKS ! I took apart the dashboard this afternoon and cleaned all of the nooks and crannies. I turned on all of the air vents and all is well - not even a lingering odor!

THANKS AGAIN

 

AAAAGH! A small can of Form-A-Gasket spilled on to the carpet! This stuff will not come out...I'm not even going to try. I'm going to have to replace the entire carpet. Anyone know where I can find one without having to pay the extreme overhead of going through the dealer? Help!!!

 

Unbelievably I was able to get the Form-A-Gasket out of the carpet with no evidence of it ever being there! Most of you probably don't know what Permatex Form-A-Gasket is. I can best describe it as looking like hot fudge and very sticky!

I took an old floor mat and sprayed Carburetor and Choke cleaner on a corner and waited a minute for a catastrophic melting. Nothing happened. Then I took my old shop vac and fitted a metal tube that was crushed on one end to mimic a corner nozzle for a vacuum cleaner, stuck it inside the hose end, and taped it on (carburetor cleaner melts most plastics). I covered the plastic trim near the gooey mess and placed the makeshift nozzle onto it and slowly sprayed (use the attached straw on the can nozzle) and vacuumed the spot at the same time. It took one can ($3.50). I was amazed!

A couple warnings:
1. DON'T do this in an enclosed area! If you're overcome by fumes and pass
out it will kill you or cause serious brain damage.

2. This stuff is highly flammable! Use your common sense or find someone who
does.

Your vacuum hose is now tainted with the crap you just dissolved and the inside of the plastic nozzle is melting, remove the metal nozzle you taped in there and carefully throw it away and then let the shop vac run for several minutes to evaporate the cleaner. Open the vacuum and throw away the bag. In fact just let the whole thing sit outside overnight.

Your car now smells like it just came back from the autobody shop. It will go away eventually and you just saved yourself a few hundred dollars, it's a small price to pay.

 

my wife spilled a gallon of milk in the trunk of our 2007 prius. she cleaned the rear carpet with some carpet cleaner and continued on.

about a month later she asked me to come out and visit her car as it was developing an "odd smell" that she couldn't figure out. i asked her if she had spilled anything....and that's when i found out about the milk.

i pulled the rear hatch and exposed the spare tire to find an awfully smelly rancid pool of milk. i cleaned the tire and the spare tire well with a soft brush and lysol cleaner. i also removed the padding below the plastic liner in the trunk (immediateyl above the spare tire) becuase it was moldy and cleaned up anything i could see with lysol. i then let it air out for a day and it seemed like we had done the job.

a couple days later my wife came back and said the smell was continuing and getting stronger. i went back and it was definitely worse.... you could not sit in the car without an open window. My three teenagers had revolted and insisted they would not drive in the car. (this has the unanticipated benefit of them finally starting to walk the half mile to school and not asking my wife for a ride at the last minute)

out again came the trunk....and the search was on. my neighbors found it odd that me and my daugther had the car out in the driveway.....sniffing it to try to see where this was all coming from. we finally localized the smell as coming from the battery which i didn't realize was in a well all its own.

a call to our mechanic quickly lead me to the conclusion that this was going to get expensive unless i was going to personally deal with this. so i googled "how to remove a prius battery" and got the battery out myself.

there was probably another quart of black rancid milk in the battery well when we got the battery out. this was a very difficult area to clean as the area below the battery has some structure and the milk had curdled up underneath this structure. i used a turkey baster with hot water and lysol to blast curdled milk out of this structure. then sucked it up with the baster and threw it out and then repeated the process about 50 times.

the neighbors were wondering what the heck was going on becuase when i emptied that baster, it was like someone dusting the area with dead fish smell. fortunately it was a windy day and the smell disipated quickly before my neighbors had me drawn and quartered for fouling the air.

after a couple hours of this i had the battery well clean enough to eat out of. i re-assembled the prius, vacumed the whole interior and wiped down all the plastic surfaces and bombed it with a lysol air freshener that claims to kill odors. the whole effort took about eight hours

after that we parked it with the windows and trunk open and did this for about five days running. when we drove it we kept the vents and windows open....and each day the smell got weaker and weaker.

the car is now back to its old self. and i am happy and still happily married.....

 

Good thing you weren't stopped by cops before cleaning your car. They usually get a little suspicious about cars with blood-soaked trunks :madgrin:.

Anyway, the worst thing I spilled in my car was Vindaloo sauce. Fortunately, the leak was contained by a rubber floor mat (since I was carrying the thing on the floor on the front passenger side), so no harm was done and the mat was easily cleaned.