Musty Smell From A/C

it eventually went away for me

 

As Doc Evan suggested, take a peek at the cabin filter. It's fairly simple to access.

Most A/C evaporators - home or car - will eventually give off a funky odor. That's from all the buggies and mold growing on them, especially the drain pan area.

Think about it: the evaporator coil is ice-cold so moisture is always forming on the coil and dripping down to the drain pan. Like a cold ice tea placed outside on a muggy day, moisture beads up on it. That's why in operation you see water dripping under and a puddle under the car.

If the buildup of mold and buggies is bad enough, you could even have health problems. So eventually you will have to clean the evaporator coil. Depending on the car, that can easy be relatively easy or a major operation.

There are many cleaning products out there designed for this. Some have to be rinsed after application, some claim not to:

http://www.hydrobalance.com/CoilCleaners.htm

http://www.greenleaf.co.nz/EvaporatorCoilCleaner.htm

http://www.cgfproducts.com/prod6frame.htm

The last is a detailed pdf about cleaning larger cased evaporator coils:

http://ftp.nucalgon.com/ftp/prodlit/3-116.pdf

In the case of a home application, if you have a cased evaporator coil it's fairly easy to remove the screws, open the access door, and clean it. If it's uncased - built into the sheet metal ductwork - you're pooched. You have to call in an A/C guy to cut the ductwork away to access it.

Hope this helps.

Jay

 

There is another thing that you can try.

You can switch off the A/C about 5 minutes before the end of the trip, cancel recirc and put it on fresh air and switch the fan to high so moisture will be removed from the A/C.

Hope this helps.

Vincent

 

A trick I learned some time ago was to turn the heater on at high speed and high temperature for 5-10 minutes. This will temporarily bake out the smell.

 

Toyota has an explanation and recommendations on just that:
http://toyota.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/toyota....fcGFnZT0x&p_li=

 

Thanks, Dan. I had posted the same question as a new thread earlier tonight -- Popoff alerted me to the existance of this existing thread.

So, O Expert One, where is the Prius' outside air intake located? I need to spray some isopropyl and water up it's nose.

Thanks,

Steve Zettel
near Libby, MT USA

 

Well LOLGuy,

If you only smell that smell when the a/c is set on “fresh†air, it may just be that sweet humid Tampa air, and you aren’t use to smelling it in such large cooled dosages.

If you only smell that smell when the a/c is set to recirculating air, you may consider taking more showers . . . or just learn to savour in your musky manliness. :lol:

If you smell that smell in both modes, maybe you could try Toyota’s suggestion (as noted in DanMan’s link) of a 1 to 5 ratio/mixture of isopropyl alcohol and water . . . sprayed into the outside air intake . . . not as a body spray / Tampa deodorant. :wink: