Help me get the stink out!

So a year ago now I spilled an entire venti Starbucks mocha latte all over my driver's seat and driver-side floor carpeting. I must have spent 3 days trying to clean that mess up by rinsing with water and soaking it up with paper towels and a shop vac.

Even after all that, the residual stale coffee and sour milk odor continues to haunt my truck and gives it that "old car" stink. I would guess all from that one incident, as I almost never eat or allow food in my truck and I'm ultra anal about keeping it clean.

Can anyone suggest strategies to get the stink out? I do NOT want to use artificial deodorizers like sprays or hanging air fresheners, or even shampoos with perfumes or scents. I don't want it to smell like a flower, I just want it to smell neutral.

Thoughts? Should I remove my driver side seat and give it a thorough cleaning from the inside out? Should I rent a carpet steamer for the floor carpets? Or would all that be futile at this point?

 

That seems logical to me.

 

Thats the problem right there. Your truck is telling you to drink some real coffee!

As far as your problem I would try the steam or take it into a detailer.

 

sounds weird but go online and see what you have to delute it to and then you spray some into a rag and then you rub it in.
my wife did it for me when in my truck i took a corner too quick and a gallon of milk spilt in the back of my AC taco. she just said give me some time. after some time smell was gone.
peroxide is some amazing stuff.

 

We had a truck that got wet on the inside once( 1980ish Chevy stepside). We let it dry or so we thought but it was semi damp in the pad and eventually got mold. We ended up having to remove all the carpet, wash it down with odorban and put new carpet in. If you have a detailer that uses a steam cleaner that can get most if not all out as long as you can get the steam to all of the material.

 

My truck now has the stink in it... I was helping my girlfriend move and she put some food in my back seat. Well, she didnt tell me that the milk was leaking and she had tried to contain it all in a plastic bag (you know, the ones from walmart that ALWAYS has holes in it... Well, She realizes that it leaked all over but didnt tell me. It wasnt until 4 days later after I REALLY started to smell the STINK and questioned her about it did I get the truth...

You know, It really isnt too big of a deal, but I wish she would've told me so the milk wasnt bakin in the Arizona heat for 4 days........

 

I've used the wet okole shampoo on my carpet and it seems to get the stink out. I've also used wetsuit cleaner, its worth a try

 

You probably have some residual coffee that is underneath the carpet. If there is padding underneath the carpet, I would clean the padding as well. Use some good carpet shampoo and then let everything dry completely.

 

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. I peeled the carpet back and shampooed the underlayment padding.

As a side note, I learned a lesson here -- I rented a steamer from the grocery store and the previous user must have used it to vacuum up cat pee out of a carpet, because it had some residual cat whiz in the tubing and cycled it thru my truck's carpet -- so my truck went from smelling like sour milk to smelling like a cat had had it's way with the carpeting.

I ended up renting a different steamer that luckily got the cat piss and coffee out, but I had to use pet urine neutralizer to get the stink out.



Now my truck just smells like damp wood from the MDF that I used to build my sub box...

 

I bought a car a couple of years ago that smelled terribly of cigarette smoke. My buddy owns a dry cleaning business and he had an ozone generator. It's what they use to get smoke smells out of clothes and drapes when there has been a house fire. We turned it on and left it in there running for about 6 hours. All the cigarette smell was gone. Worked wonders.

 

Ive seen this episode of seinfeld, it didnt end well, glad you had a different result! I wish they sold new car smell in a can tho hehe.