My 360 turned to biohazard zone :( :(

Post by **jtbo** » 16 Jan 2007 11:56 am

There grows stuff (I guess it is called mildew) at steering wheel and seats, weather has been too wet and my car has not been used for really really long time. I did left some air passages open but I guess not enough or weather just have been too wet.

Maybe it is possible to clean up, but don't know, anyone has experience from this?

Hard to dry it as there is raining water almost constantly

Post by **Chris_C** » 16 Jan 2007 01:15 pm

Yeah, don't worry about it mate, Fake got it over the seats and steering wheel when I left it. The plastics are easy, it'll wipe off, and the seats and other material I sorted with some car apolstery cleaner which was 49p from my local cheap shop, and did a surprisingly amazing job... Just let it then dry out throughly afterwards.

I had a quick look in Kar over xmas, and it hasn't done it yet, but Fake did use to leak a bit from the drain in the heater box, and would be constantly misted up.

Post by **jtbo** » 16 Jan 2007 02:22 pm

Mine had snow inside, door seals are perhaps not as good as new?

I have researched a bit and there is various ways to do it thoroughly, using piimä mixed with water and clean it by vinegar/water mix or then dry interior and use baking soda, let it be overnight and clean it out with vacuum cleaner.
There was also some mildew removal stuff, might try to find that too.

piimä is bad tasting stuff people drink here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_milk

My problem is that I can't dry it, weather is too wet and I have no place where I could put it so it could dry well.

Must visit some marine shop for drying sacks, maybe those are enough.

So owning a car is constant cost, no matter if you do drive or don't drive, amount of money it will need is almost same, I'm sure I need to do brakes too and who knows what else when I start driving again.

Post by **Chris_C** » 16 Jan 2007 03:13 pm

The constant cost thing is about right... they don't like sitting around

As you car isn't in a garage, what about huge amounts of silica gel? Its a really hydrophillic stuff, I think it's what you are on about, you can get it from marine shops. Only problem is you need a way of drying it regularly, with the amount of water involved I wouldn't like to do it in the airing cupboard, you'd get bad damp problems in the house then!

Post by **jtbo** » 16 Jan 2007 03:56 pm

There is one product, called drying ball (direct translation) in marine shop that has small container at bottom and water goes there what it collects from air, there is replaceable silica or something at top, lol, you certainly can't understand much from my text, too difficult words

So with that I can throw water out and put used cartridge to trash bin.

I got also recommendation of getting dipers, not for me but for car

Those should absorb humidity too, but I don't know how good that would be compared to drying ball thing.

Post by **Chris_C** » 16 Jan 2007 05:33 pm

Yeah, the drying ball things you have found will work! Thing is, instead of throwing away the cartridges you can dry them out and reuse them, if you can think of a way of drying them out. Basically work on the principle that all things want to be equal, so the amount of moisture in the air is greater than in the silica, so moves into the silica. Due to the design of the drying ball, its very difficult for water to escape on its own as it wants to condensate on the lid of the cartridge. These are probably your best bet.

You could use nappies/dipers, they contain sodium polyacrylate usually, which is also what film studios etc use for fake snow, basically dry its a fine powder, and as it absorbs water increases massivly very much like silica. Again, can be dried out and reused, I have no idea on the internal shape of nappies, but as they arn't designed for moisture removal like this I'd be tempted to get several ice cream containers, punch holes in the lids, and fill each with an inch of sodium polyacrylate. The holes will let moisture vapout in, but make it a hard to get it out again without taking the lid off, and we want to trap it as much as possible!!

Thats actually a vaguely intresting idea, might make a couple of them to put in Kar, and get parents to change them once a week....

Post by **jtbo** » 17 Jan 2007 11:54 am

Right, enter to horror zone, pictures may contain material that may cause permanent trauma or something worse, look at your own risk...

http://www.janiervast.com/kuvat/index.p ... eusvaurio/

Post by **Chris_C** » 17 Jan 2007 12:27 pm

Really Jani, don't worry, Fake was 10 times worse than that! Just keep it cleaned, and make sure you can get fresh air into the car every so often. The plastics just wipe off, and the seats can be cleaned with upholstery cleaner!!!

Post by **Cornholio** » 17 Jan 2007 12:42 pm

Oh dear, that does look nasty

Post by **jtbo** » 17 Jan 2007 01:41 pm

Chris_C wrote:Really Jani, don't worry, Fake was 10 times worse than that! Just keep it cleaned, and make sure you can get fresh air into the car every so often. The plastics just wipe off, and the seats can be cleaned with upholstery cleaner!!!

I will take seat covers out and do a good wash with stuff that I got, might be simplest thing to do, even my artist friend told that match is only cure that helps

Fake have been really bad

Soon running out of light and I have not figured out how to open this damn bottle, cursed are all safety devices in bottles, they won't stop children, but those who really need to get these open, darn.

Well, 1 hour light left, at most.

Post by **shimon340** » 18 Jan 2007 02:40 am

hi there!

I currently have a 440 and a 480 looking like that!

my 240 did the same thing but that was due to a leaking sunroof which is now sealed.

the 480 is clear why it is damp, its got three leaks. the 440 is a bit of a mystery and since moving it it hasnt got damp again!

Ive been told a light wiping of seat material with methylated spirits will kill the mold / fungus. dont put this on plastic though. for plastic just simply wipe it off as the mold doesnt adhere very well to it.

im looking into getting some of the anti fungal sprays used for air conditioning vents - the damp wall paper smell air con vents sometimes smell of is a fungus that grows in the damp cool vent after the air con is switched off. to avoid this, run your air con for 2 mins on very hot after long periods of air con use. not popular on summer days but it avoids the problem. new volvo ( P2 and P1 onwards ) have a unique climate control function which runs the vents on hot for 2-3 mins after the car is locked to dry the vents.

I used to use a zeolite based product for drying compounds in the lab ( chemistry work ). The compound is sold as a unique drying agent for use in decicators ( driers ). It has a unique affect of changing colour when completely dry and when saturated with water. its red when dry and blue when saturated. drying in the oven at 110C for a day will dry it out. heating at higher temperatures might make this process faster or it might damage the zeolite. if i find out the name of the stuff I'll post it here!

Shimon

Post by **jtbo** » 18 Mar 2007 01:42 am

Well, got them to disappear now with vacuum cleaner and water + Tolu, hmm now what on earth that would be in some understandable language, it is made of pine wood oil and is very good for cleaning, hmm.
Anyway, don't know how well I got those away, but must try some lemon if it that did not help, lemon has helped for some I have heard.

Also found out that my car battery is dead, not enough power to start car not even I kept it in loading for very long time and checked water level and that was ok. So need to buy new.

Post by **Chris_C** » 18 Mar 2007 03:21 pm

If you keep fresh air circulating in the car every so often it won't come back Jani!

I'm dreading what I'm going to find in Kar when I get back to it, although it had survived Feb->Xmas, just havn't looked at it since.

Post by **jtbo** » 18 Mar 2007 10:13 pm

You mean that I should actually drive with my car?

I have magic box in there, now there won't be any humidity inside as that magic box should take care of any.

Post by **jtbo** » 19 Mar 2007 10:29 pm

Got new battery in today, also started car, runs perhaps bit rich, no idle, choke makes it worse. Must put new fuel in, needle sits tight at E and light is lit, so there is probably some water in fuel.

I had to keep it running by pumping throttle pedal, same as before when I had trouble with getting fuel into carb so I believe it is contamined fuel now.

Still will need to find way how to get ground cable to attached properly to battery, seems to be that bolt is jammed in cable shoe, lot of rust, like ship that has been at bottom of sea for a long time, then need to fix brakes as those are on whole time now.

No sign of anything growing there anymore.