I have a strong smell of ammonia/urine coming through the A/C when on recirculation. It is not so bad without recirculation, or when I run the fan at a high speed. I've read the threads on inspecting the cabin air filter - I guess I might find the reason for the smell on or around the filter... Any other ideas for finding the source of the smell or generally cleaning the cabin air intake? I don't think any of my kids have had an accident...
Other ideas? Watch out for Lisa Nowak the spaceball astronaut, the police released her on her own incontinence.... I am wondering what the temperature settings are on your AC controls? good luck.
Pull the cabin air filter and see if you have the smell in it. If its still clean, you can try some antibacterial spray on it like Frebreeze or Odor-Ban (available at Costco). Or you can replace it. Once you have the glove box removed, you can stick your face in the hole and see if the smell is coming from inside the cavity. You can spray some of the Frebreeze in there, but be careful about the plastic trim that shows ... I don't know if the spray would hurt the "silver colored plastic", but a couple people have marred it with cleaners, so you have to be careful. For really bad car smells, you can check with your dealer. They often know of a service that helps them recondition used cars to remove smoke and other odors. I think they use an ozone generator in the car while they run the A/C in recirc mode. Ozone in concentration can be an irritant, so I'd be careful if you decide to try this yourself with one of those ozone air purifiers they use in homes.
Toyota has a foaming cleaner product (at least our dealership does) that's designed to expand throughout the air intake cleaning it, and then to drain away. That might help. Maybe 15 years ago, we had a neighbor's male cat "mark" my wife's Mercury Sable wagon. It was awful, and being Florida, not using the AC was not an option. I ended up just dumping a bunch of dishwashing detergent into the air intake (base of windshield), and hosing it out for the better part of an hour. I theorize that I successfully washed out the bulk piss, because the hideous overwhelming odor was gone right away. The barely detectable residual odor was gone shortly thereafter, which I assume was just fumes already in the delivery ducts. I feel for you.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(KD6HDX @ May 8 2007, 06:03 PM) [snapback]437889[/snapback]</div> be advised you will be hearing from my attorney for defamation.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(pearsonrj @ May 8 2007, 07:37 PM) [snapback]437875[/snapback]</div> There's at least one article on Prius Chat from a year or so back about someone who had mice living in his air ducts.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(pearsonrj @ May 8 2007, 07:37 PM) [snapback]437875[/snapback]</div> It could be terrorists. STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE and contact the FBI.
