240D Loses "That Awful Smell" - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

morgantruce · #1 03-02-2004, 04:14 PM

I travelled half way across the country (on a Greyhound...) to buy my 240D. Thankfully it was in teriffic shape and ran great The price was right. Everything was right except one small thing: it stunk bad... it stunk really bad! It wasn't a musty, rotten smell (which I would have greatly preferred) but a sweet, overpowering, smell of the kind that somone actually chooses to spray around a car---thinking they are improving something.

I was tempted to ask the owner, "What is that stench?" but thought such a question might very well lead to my travelling back home again in that Greyhound---and there was no way I was going to let that happen. So I bought the car---and the smell---and drove it home with the windows open. The car spent the winter in my garage. I left the windows cracked a tiny bit. You could just walk into the garage and be knocked over by the smell. I sprayed the inside of the car with Febreeze----no help.

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Most people would describe the smell as coconut "fragrance" but I would not stop there. It smelled like a coconut gone bad years ago. It smelled the way I would imagine a brothel near a Navy base in some tropcal location would smell. Hey---how would I know?---I was in the Air Force!

For the past two weeks, I've been polishing, waxing, fixing, (but mostly admiring) the car. This morning I finally pulled out all the floor mats to vacuum---and----there it was under the passenger seat: some detailing shop had placed a two inch square piece of blotter paper that had been saturated in coconut concentrate. I grabbed that little sucker, ran outside grabbing a shovel by the door..... and buried it!

R Leo · #2 03-02-2004, 04:27 PM

Now you've done it Ollie. You do know that 'odor eater' was put there by the PO to obscure the nasty, "wet horsehair smell" created by the bio-degrading, 25 year-old 'organic, all-natural' upholstery padding that is residing underneath all that unblemished MBTex.

You have a NIMBLE? What a strange, yet desirable, little craft! A Hobbit boat if there ever was one! Tell me more about it off line....pulleeze?

83MB240D · #3 03-02-2004, 04:53 PM

Congrats on the purchase of your 240D! I'm very familiar with that smell as my car also has it. I sprayed the interior with many different types of deodorants and air fresheners, but the smell is still there. Must be all the odor trapped in the leatherette/vinyl/plastic interior.

Congrats again!

morgantruce · #4 03-02-2004, 05:27 PM

83MB240D:
If you are serious about wanting to get rid of ANY smell... let me have your address. I'll go out and dig up that coconut fragrance blotter and mail it to you.

I'd probably get arrested for sending something like that through the mail...

Wes Bender · #5 03-02-2004, 05:29 PM

... and you shouldn't have to worry about gophers and moles for quite a while, either.

Congrats on the new car!

Wes

Fisherman · #6 03-02-2004, 05:51 PM

When I got my 300 I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the sickly sweet scent was coming from. Then one day i was taking out the center console and all of a sudden noticed that the smell got appreciably worse. Well I found it. It was the center console carpet that accessorizes the console so well. I had sniffed all around the floor boards thinking it must be under a seat...
It seems that the PO had dumped perfume on it and after about 15 washings, drying in the sun, sprayed with every odor remover on teh planet I can now at least sit in the car. My wife doesn';t even notice it... must be a womens fragrance that she uses?...

mplafleur · #7 03-02-2004, 09:56 PM

LOL, this one had me rolling.

#8 03-03-2004, 02:12 PM

would be a good start. I also find that once you take a car through a full-service wash, smoke and other smells tend to be neutralized by whatever cleaner they use on the interiors.

morgantruce · #9 03-03-2004, 02:39 PM

Jim B+,

Around these parts, a "full service wash" means that there's a kid hangin' around with a pocket full of quarters to make change for the 25 cent high pressure machine---which constitutes the entire operation.

But I seem to remember 30 years back (when I still lived in a series of major East Coast cities) that car washes actually employed people that washed YOUR car.... kinda made up for all the noise, pollution, and mayhem... I guess.

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I spritzed a little Febreeze on the carpets... a box of Arm & Hammer under the seat seems like a good idea.

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Oh... speaking of under the seat... does anyone have an idea of what is that electric plug hanging down from the middle under the driver's seat? It has a male connector that looks like a dual banana plug. Where's it go? What's it do? Seat belt alarm perhaps? Connector for the rocket ejection seat assembly?

84300DT · #10 03-04-2004, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by morgantruce

Oh... speaking of under the seat... does anyone have an idea of what is that electric plug hanging down from the middle under the driver's seat? It has a male connector that looks like a dual banana plug. Where's it go? What's it do? Seat belt alarm perhaps? Connector for the rocket ejection seat assembly?

seat belt buzzer

crash9 · #11 03-04-2004, 10:24 AM

Some where on the “Vintage Bus” site http://www.type2.com/ I read a cure for unsmellin something – do a search – it’s a huge site. Seems like it involved waiting until summer and needing to set the car out in the sun for a day. Also sounds like something that might just create a different smell. Anyway check it out.