I was recently asked to deodorize a car about two hundred feet from where we were actually working. When I asked the agent to bring the car over, he said he "couldn't". Why?... "I can't stand the smell, even to drive it 200 feet!" was his answer.
When I got to the car and opened the door, a strong odor of dead fish filled the hot Florida air. The team had already vacuumed the car. They had steam cleaned the rugs, but the odor persisted. I smelled the rugs....no odor. I smelled the seats....no odor. I opened the trunk and the smell was overpowering. I lifted the rug covering the spare tire and the tire well was full of water, fish heads, fish entrails....and stink.
Two fisherman rented the car, filled the spare tire well with ice to preserve their catch. When they got back to the car they filleted the fish, and left the heads, tails etc for the rental car company to clean. The hot Florida sun didn't help. We opened the drain in the spare tire well and drained out the water. We vacuumed up the fish parts. We removed the spare tire and jack, we washed the trunk and spare tire with soap and water... although better, it still smelled fishy. We wet a clean rag with KLC's Atomizer Liquid - Fabric Deodorizer & Protectant and wiped the hard surfaces of the trunk, the spare tire and jack. We then used the atomizer with the KLC Atomizer Liquid - pointed directly at the trunk carpet, and for 60 seconds on the car interior carefully directing the flow directly on all cloth surfaces. Then we closed the doors and allowed the atomized deodorizer (looks like a fog in the car) to do it's job. Because of the small (fog-like) paricles you CANNOT enter the car for at least 10 minutes. After that, the seats are dry and the odor is being eliminated.
Within a couple of hours the car was returned to the ready line -- free of fish odor.
The moral of the story is to be sure and locate and remove all odor sources. If odor source has soaked into a carpet or upholstery wash the affected area with detergent and a least of pint of water and use a wet-vac to remove odor causing materials that have soaked into the carpet backing or seat-foam underneath the upholstery, then treat with the KLC Fabric Deodorizer, being sure it soaks into affected areas.