Moldy smell

Just curious, because of the recent weather related events. Are you the original owner? If not, did the car come from a state that experienced a bad hurricane or flood after the model year and before you purchased?

 

Are you using the air conditioning a lot?

It tends to accumulate water on the "evaporator" (the AC radiator inside the heating/ventilating system, in the dash), similar to a glass of ice water. There's a drain for this water, but it's not perfect, and the evaporator in particular I think, will tend to retain water in it's fins.

Dark and humid, it's prone to grow mould. There are cleaner kits available from Toyota I believe, and @NutzAboutBolts has a video on how to use it on third gen (pinned in maintenance sub-forum), maybe similar enough in second gen.

This may or may not be your problem, just one thing to check. If it turns out to be the problem, after cleaning the system, I'd suggest to turn the AC off when your within a mile of your destination, run just the fan to give it time to dry out. It's a pain, but helps. Also just consider using the AC less.

 

Previous accidents?
Flood car?
Pets?
Cargo?
Weather Strips?

It's coming up on fall in Charlotte.
You might investigate removing the seats and cleaning the carpet. The hatch is also a likely place to look for things like previous water intrusion or itty-bitty pieces of glass from a window replacement.

+1 on the previous post.
I've seen one-owner, never wrecked, never flooded, cars owned by non-smokers and non-pet owners smell funky just because the owners never rolled down the window and ran the A/C all the time.

 

Have you checked in the spare tire and 12v battery area?

With the Gen2's there is a weld seam that fails over time and allows water to accumulate in the rear of the car.

Keep us posted .

 

Check the cabin air filter behind the glove box, I have seen some rather interesting build up on these filters over the years.

 

some have gotten a bad smell from the hybrid battery vent tubes.

 

Like Ray said check in the hatch area again.Take the spare tire out and get a flashlight and look inside the 12 volt battery well for standing water. if you see standing water in the battery well you have a very common cracked body seam up in the hatch area where the quarter panel meets the roof. There's some weld rivets there in the valley of the window hatch that tends to crack. You know the black plastic strips that are on one each side of the roof that go form the back to the front you can just pop that plastic strip off and look in the area where that strip ends in the rear valley for hairline cracks. Water gets n those cracks and runs into the hatch area. pretty common.

If no standing water in the back hatch area you may just have a funked up e-coil under the dash. Dealer fix for that is to inject microbial cleaning foam back up the drip tube under the car. The foam fills the e-coil and de-funks it. Pretty common with all modern cars. My dealer charges $125 for this service. You can do it yourself but the hardship is jacking the front of the car up high enough to get to the drip tube which basicly comes out under the glove box area. You can buy KOOLIT on Amazon.com its basically the same stuff the dealer uses and has the special rubber attachment t hose to connect to the drip tube.
If first time this will be cleaned I would get 2 cans.

The funking happens with intermittent use of the ac. Down here in Florida my ac has been on every single day 365 days a year even in winter for 10 years. The e-coil never gets to dry out. So it never funks up. The best part of that is if you use the ac every single day it usually never fails. Its the intermittent use of ac where its not used for days or weeks that kills a car ac system.

E-coil cleaning and condenser cleaning and cabin filter replacement is just basic car ac maintenance. I clean my condenser every 2 months.
10 years later my ac is ice cold. Just like you should do to your home ac system.

 

The Prius from my almost 2 months of ownership is a Intresting car and nothing is as it appears. You are probably getting water in the left rear storage bin area and it may have flowed down to the carpets. The one I bought had such issues and I had to remove and replace the whole carpet and sound dampening material. Take a 10mm socket and extension and remove the drivers side rear storage bin and report back.

SM-G935P ?

 

Where is the drivers side rear storage bin?

 

Open the trunk and to the left there is a triangular shaped cover you lift and under it a bin. In the bottom center of the bin is the 10mm nut.

SM-G935P ?

 

In the front under the hood by the wipers there's a cover you can remove and clean out all the dirt that accumulates from years if being used in the real world. If thats clogged or full of muck that could cause your odor. Don't forget to check the cabin filter you don't want one like this one I had and if you don't know where it what it is then it's probably time to change it.

SM-G935P ?

 

Typos....

SM-G935P ?

 

Check this out also.
https://priuschat.com/index.php?threads/122081/

SM-G935P ?

 

Oh never seen that mentioned about anything to do with leaking water collection. If that's collecting water
It's coming from high which is usually the cracked body seam. It's got to have a hell of a leak to get into that bin. Usually just collects under the spare tire and if r ally bad fills that whole Area up and overflows into the back seat carpet,
You have to be really out if it to let it get that high in the well as it makes a lot of noise sloshing around back there,

Remove the drain plug under the spare tire and the one in the battery well. Unless you park outside cause Rats will get in real quickl