Something died in my car
 

Well, coming home last night I decided to turn the heat on so I pressed the auto button to turn it on. Soon after I turn it on the whole car stinks like ass, so i rolled down the window to clear it out and tried it again and it definately was the heater system.

This morning I was leaving and turned the heat on by pressing auto and same thing, same smell. I aired out the car and then turned on the defrost so it would come out of the side vents instead of the front ones and it didn't stink at all.

So, I think something died in my vents or something, and i need to get it out. I haven't tried it with the A/C but would imagine the same results would occur. Anyone know a good way to go about fixing this. I was just planning on taking out the vents and seeing if there was anything i could grab out of it. But is there another duct down below that something could have died in?

Thanks.

hahahahaha

I thought that my car was doing that the other day, but I was just driving too close to the oil upgrader, heh.

Have you opened your hood? There used to be (keywords *used to be*) a cat that liked to crawl up under my dad's hood and sleep on the oh-so-warm engine block or something up there. RPMs, belts, and cats don't mix.

i looked around under the hood a little bit, and tried turning heat and cool on 65 and 85 all the way just now and it didn't do it. maybe it's just my feet + the hot air.

Were did you park your car all winter? A mouse made a house in your HEAT duct

i parked my car in the driveway outside and drove it nearly every day in the winter.

You were not returning home from a Chilli contest were you?? :eek: :eek:

:) j/k

Check your wheels if you ran over a skunk. I'm not kidding!

yeah.. but that wouldn't explain why i only smell it when i hit the auto button to turn heat on. I'm gunna hope it will just fix itself for now.

You should be using econ when you want heat. Its pretty pointless to use auto for heat. I only use auto when i need the a/c.

whats the difference?

In econ mode the ac compressor will not kick on. This saves the car from having to cool itself off once you have heated it up.

If it's not "something dead"...
 

Go to Wal-Mart, Autozone, whatever and in the air freshener isle there is this stuff that comes in a can and actually kills bacteria (kinda like lysol for your car). You can drill a small hole in one of the AC evap containers under the glovebox and inject the stuff in there, then plug the hole. I had a funky smell for a while but one of the small cans of the stuff got rid of it, and its been fine ever since (although it will smell pretty strong the first couple of times you use the AC). There was a post on it a year or so back when Dayle had some new odor eater stuff that did the same thing, try a search.

But if there really is something dead up in there, you might want to take care of that first ;)

i concur

Tom

I had something build a nest in one of my Subaru GL wagons one winter. Come summer, I fire it up, turn on the vents for some fresh air and, whoowee! I hooked up a battery charger and let the fan run all night. That helped, but not enough.

Next I ran the fan on max and sprayed the better part of a can of aerosol air fresher / disinfectant down the intake between the hood and windshield. That helped a lot, but still not enough.

After that I put a long hose on the end of my air compressor nozzle, fed it down the vents, cranked the fan on max, and blasted away. Little bits of pine needles, insulation, fur, twigs, animal droppings, and other decaying matter came out the vents when I did this. It also blasted the heavier items down into the blower fan. With all the noise from the blower fan grinding away at animal nest debris, I pulled the fan out and a bunch of stuff fell from the opening. With one more shot of air freshener spray, the problem was almost completely solved. ...but not quite. (In fact, debris kept coming out of the vents for several weeks.)

Finally I waited until a warm, sunny day and pulled the blower fan off. I put a small bucket under the opening where the fan was and then ran a large hose from it into another larger bucket outside of the car. With that done, I went crazy with a garden hose. I blasted all the vents, including the defrost. When I was done, I reinstalled the blower fan and let it run for a few hours with the battery charger hooked up. The vents dried very quickly, and within a few hours, the overspray on the dash and seats had also dried. This finally solved the problem. My next step was to remove the dash and throw the ducts into a bucket of bleach. Die, nasty stench! Die!