My daughter has a 96 chevy cavalier that has a terrible odor,and we have tried everything to get rid of it. It seems to come from the passenger side airbag area.Any ideas about what is causing it and how to get rid of it?
Could be a dead mouse in the air duct.
Not an easy job to clean out and sprays/deodorizers don’t work.
Sometimes you can drag out whatever is in the duct by removing enough dash to access the hose and use something a little flexible with a hook on the end.
Exercise caution when trying this method as you may grab the blend door by accident and damage it.
The only other way is to remove everything.
here is 2 car talk columns on that topic
http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/1997/September/09.html
Thanks for the comments,but it is definitly not a dead animal of any kind although that is very close to the way it smells. It has been way too long for an animal carcass to continue to smell.
When she bought the car we thought it was a cleaning problem,but nothing has worked so mostly she just tries to minimize it with air fresheners.
read the two cartalk eds above…
You say a “terrible odor”, which, I guess is unacceptable. You may have to have the dash components dismanteled to get rid of this odor. Since this vehicle has only a small value you may take the route of a relative of mine who sold his car after hitting a skunk. He could not get rid of the odor.