My three year old had just hurled an impressive quantity of foul smelling nastiness all over the rear seats and seatbelts 🙁 struggling not to barf myself, I’ve succeeded in clearing up the visible mess, but quite frankly, the car still stinks. Short of just scrapping the thing, any tips on what product, technique etc worked for you in a similar situation would be gratefully appreciated. Right. Back to scrubbing… <dons gas mask>

A wet and dry vac – you need to get any liquid that remains up.
Then air it and upholstery shampoo – even Asda’s own car one to break down any proteins – its these that stink as they decompose

Burn some hair in there, you’ll not smell the vom after that.

Vinegar works well.

Or just do as I do; have such a vile car that a bit of child vom adds another layer of interesting and varied smells to identify as you drive along. Keeps my kids happy for seconds that game.

Call a local cab company, find out what they use or which valet company locally cleans cars for them

Milk will get rid of the vomit smell. Or at least mask it.

My mate bought me a new door interior after failing to puke out the window and filling the door pocket.

Magic Tree, Lemon Fresh. Lots of them, a whole box full opened and scattered liberally throughout the car and especially in the air vents.

If that doesn’t work. Trade in the car.

Actually, just get the seats and carpets washed and cleaned by your local Eastern European hand car wash establishment. Worked for me. 😀

You can use an ‘interior bomb’

http://www.cleanyourcar.co.uk/air-fresheners/dakota-odor-bombs-various-fragrences-/prod_1151.html

This happened to me and it was **** horrific as my son had just had a cup of milk!!!

Took a week of vanishing the footwell carpet, fabreezing the crap out of it daily, and some powerful jellybean air freshners and a week driving round with the windows open!

It’s now either gone or I’ve got used to it and no longer notice!

A wet ‘n dry vac is the best option; using the small hand tool they are good for removing contaminants from the upholstery.

Wash the carpets then air the car thoroughly to head off bacterial growth in damp materials.

Poo in the footwell….you won’t notice the sicky smell then.

Biological washing powder is good for breaking smells down. Try it with a wet vac.

I chunked in my car with norovirus. It was horrific. Spent hours and hours scrubbing and used every product going. Nothing really worked. The smell did fade over about three weeks but, luckily, I spun the car into a landrover and wrote it off. Problem solved.

Detol antibacterial stuff and scrub everything seems to work with my annual child puke incident.

Dilute solution of bicarbonate of soda, then several rinses with water, and then febreze and/or shake and vac. Both contain odour absorbing molecules that will in time entrap and neutralise the butyric acid that gives baby vomit its unique essence.

Jelly beans / magic trees will just make the car smell of magic tree and baby vomit.

Nuke it from orbit.

Thanks all. Turns out I’m going shopping tomorrow. Love the STW hive mind; it’s like a google that has a sense of humour and empathy, and has generally more credible responses, too.

All the above, then use a lot of this stuff on everything – leave it on the carpet/upholstery overnight at least before hoovering up

Agree that you need to kill the bacteria. How difficult would it be to actually remove the rear seats and pressure wash/scrub with copious amounts of water?

Of course make sure there are no electrical elements before you start steam cleaning or chucking lots of fluid about. I have heard that steam cleaning can interfere with airbag sensors on front seats – but that could be nonsense I suppose.

Once you’ve treated the cause, then you can attack any lingering smell. I highly recommend Nilodor One Drop: http://ratwarehouse.co.uk/shop_detail.php?item=314&amp; it’s amazing stuff – comes in a tiny bottle, and you just use one drop of it per day somewhere in the car until the smell goes away. I bought two doggie cars and this stuff made it disappear. Costs buttons.

Failing that – endless rounds of neutradol shake n vac or baking soda and vacuuming

Not as bad smell wise, but when my wife’s tub of tomato soup fell over on the seat of my brand new car 👿 I found that the Autoglym upholstery cleaner and lots of warm water did the job very well. (Top Tip – those beanbag dehumidifier things from the car shop for a tenner work really well).

A big handful of whole coffee beans sprinkled over the seats where the puke was will clear the smell in a week.

bi-carb worked amazingly for me last month. Breaks the acid down into non gruft smelling salts or something.

I’ve just used ice (packet of frozen sausages actually) and bicarb to remove a bloodstain from a garment, astonishingly effective. I did read that bicarb will remove smells. Make a thick paste and ladle it on and rub it in with an old toothbrush, let it dry out, dust off. Done.

Bump. Mate round here spent weeks trying to get a seatpost out of a steel frame, none of the shops approached could shift it. Final solution? Vinegar. It worked.

What happens if we mix vinegar with bicarb? Could be a solution (sic).

There is no such thing as an odour-absorbing molecule, that’s TV advertising bullshit. There are some molecules that are thought to deaden the nose but little proof. You can over-saturate the nose with a smell and make it anosmic, in other words deaden it to that smell. You can overwhelm the odour with another, stronger and nicer odour. By far the best way to remove bad smells is to wash out the contaminant and allow what remains to evaporate, which can take a few days with some materials.

vomit is acidic, bicarbonate of soda will be your best best.

top tip, BOS works well tipped into smelly trainers as well

This is why I’m glad I have leather seats!

Two year old gets car sick pretty regularly. Covers come off her car seat and go in the washing machine. Leather seats wipe down with anti-bac wipes. Still a grim job but no lingering smells yet.

Though on Friday she went full Exorcist and managed to hit her DVD player on the back of my seat! 😕

On a related note. How do you get rid of melted chocolate on a car seat. Driver’s seat not child 😳

Thorough cleaning with upholstery shampoo. Then spray with one of those laundry pre-wash enzyme sprays.

Repeat until the vomit has gone.

When a baby, one of my children hurled all over the child seat, seatbelt, floor, and a big pool formed under the car seat on the upholstery. Took a while to clean up the milky gloop. And I thought it was all ok. Next spell of warm weather showed all was not OK. The shampoo and enzyme spray did the job and left no residual vomit odour over the next 8 years I had the car.

I used the same technique when another child hurled over the carpet and seat edge in my SO’s 1 month old car. It was all fine once it dried.

You can’t really mask the smell. You really need to destroy the source.

Nothing works i’m afraid. I tried all of these things and more. I ended up just masking the smell with some fabreze spray until it went a good few months later. I even went to a valuators prepared to spend big on their top top interior valet, but they said even that probably won’t work.

Look on the bright side. At least it’s getting colder. I had to endure it over a summer. It wasn’t pleasant coming back to the car after it had been standing int he sun all day.

When Gti Junior was small we had an ex-MOD Land Rover 90, which was bare metal inside so you could just hose it out.

As I wrote above, the only answer is complete removal of the organic material that causes the smell; you can’t mask it. To do that you need to replace the mats or carpets and wash it out of the upholstery with a wet ‘n dry vac. I managed to spill coffee on the seat of my brand-new car last month and got it all out with a Bissell wet vac thingy.

Having experienced this in the new bimmer 2 days after i got it,

Remove the seat bench from the car – they all lift of relatively easy (unless hinged).

Proceed to see how much puke you missed as it slid down the seat belt and bench.

Mop up puke

Lift any wires out the way.

Get Bicarb, make paste and rub it everywhere including seat belt (this is a must they seem to suck it all up)

Get Seat Bench, and appply mucho bicarb paste everywhere – leave to dry

Once dry, hoover everything up.

Then – you need to wash the seat bench and belts try to soak them in a bucket (seat belt) as you will get white staining from the bicarb – don’t worry it comes off.

then get some biological washing stuff – vanish is pretty good – but make sure it’s not the one with chlorine/bleach. give everything a good scrub.

Rinse everything a few times, then allow to dry.

If leather – get some leather conditioner (cream) apply liberally, then buff off.

This worked 100% in my car.

oh, also, try if you can to get inside the seat belt buckle/latch – puke is good at hiding.

You can’t really mask the smell. You really need to destroy the source.

that’s a little extreme, we’re talking about 3-year old v8ninety junior

My kids of 3 and 5 years did this, simultaneously, two weeks ago!

My wife and in-laws did a great job of clearing out the chunks and generally making it better. However, it still stank and I could see that there was still sick in certain places – e.g. down seatbelt buckle casings etc.

In the end, the best thing for me was looking-up how to remove the whole rear bench. Someone will usually have done a photo guide online for your car, which you should follow to allow you access to the bare metal chassis and therefore things like seatbelt fixings.

Sounds hard, but in my case (VW Golf) it was very simple. I then washed everything inside and outside, using a toothbrush and concentrated carwash liquid for in between the creases of the rear seat bench. I also used an air conditioning “bomb”, whereby your running aircon sucks the contents of an aerosol in via the vents – and kills any lurking nasties causing smells deep inside the vent system.

I was fortunate in that we’ve always had cars with leather interiors since having kids, for that wipe-clean ease. I will never, ever have fabric interiors while we still have the kids!

When I was about 10 I drank some out of date apple juice and had a session of projectile vomiting in dads company car and as I was in the front it went down the dash air vents. There was no way that was getting sorted unless you removed the dash and cleaned out the ducts. It was winter so the heating warmed up the puke nicely to make the aroma even better.

Fortunately about a month later dad was due a new company car. I always felt guilty that someone will have bought a dark blue Orion gear at auction and not known about the vomit smell until they turned the heating on!

There is no such thing as an odour-absorbing molecule, that’s TV advertising bullshit.

Generations of clathrate chemists would beg to differ.

Li’l J projectile vomited in the car t’other night.
bloody crickey it reeks.Cleand it once with baking soda….it needs another go. 🙁

Two year old gets car sick pretty regularly

sorry but i had to chuckle at the thought of GrahamS doing donuts with his two y/o in the back….

I never got rid of the smell after my daughter puked in a two week old car. The smell only went when I handed the keys back.