First of all, let me explain how this started. Just like all great horror stories, innocently enough. I went to go vacuum out my interior.
I started by pulling the seats, and discovering about $5 in quarters and random silver change. Score! I vacuumed all the carpet on the passenger side, and went to start on the driver's side. I take the mat out from the driver's side, and notice that my carpet is a little grey, from what appears to be the black rubbery underside of the mat wearing away, and dirtying the carpet. Crappy, I think to myself.
So I start to look at the carpet, and notice it's a little lumpy, and uneven. Upon further inspection, the carpet feels just ever-so-slightly damp. Hmmmm, not a good thing, methinks. So I stick my fingers under the carpet, through the cutout around the gas pedal. I pull them out, dirty, wet, and slightly slimy. My wife comes running out of the house, after she hears me yell "FUCK!" just about as loud as I can.
I pull up as much of the carpet on the driver's side as I can without dismantling the interior, and I not only see it, I smell it. The entire floorpan of my driver's side footwell, including most of the foam on the underside of the carpet, is SOAKING. No standing puddles, just very, VERY wet. This is not good. I start to panic, thinking it's coolant, gasoline, brake fluid, god knows what. I pull off a peice of the foam from the carpet, and squeeze it out into my hand. It's just water, but nasty, stinking, stagnant, under-the-sink water. Disgusting, but a relief.
So for the next 2 hours, I spend my time on my knees outside the car, with towels and a blow dryer, drying out the footwell of my car. I had to pull most of the foam off of the underside of the carpet, as it was slimy and pretty much crap from it being soaked for so long. I spend half the time gagging from the stench, but also relieved because I've figured out why my car smells like wet dog sometimes, and that I'm taking care of it. There's not so much padding under the carpet now, but with the floormat in you can't really tell. Eventually, I'm going to just replace the whole carpet, it's pretty stained.
I have no idea how the water got there, it sure as hell didn't get there and get that nasty in the 3 months I've owned it. I immediatley searched the floor for holes, rust, etc and found nothing, to my overwhelming relief. My best guess is that at some point, the window on the driver's side must have been left down while it was raining or someting, and a large amount of water ran down under the carpet. I contacted the previous owner, and he swears that for as long as he owned it, the only thing he ever spilled in there was a cup of coffee, and it didn't go through the floormat, which I believe, he's a good guy. So for the meantime, it's all dried out, and at some point I'll just have to find a good, used carpet to swap in.
I started by pulling the seats, and discovering about $5 in quarters and random silver change. Score! I vacuumed all the carpet on the passenger side, and went to start on the driver's side. I take the mat out from the driver's side, and notice that my carpet is a little grey, from what appears to be the black rubbery underside of the mat wearing away, and dirtying the carpet. Crappy, I think to myself.
So I start to look at the carpet, and notice it's a little lumpy, and uneven. Upon further inspection, the carpet feels just ever-so-slightly damp. Hmmmm, not a good thing, methinks. So I stick my fingers under the carpet, through the cutout around the gas pedal. I pull them out, dirty, wet, and slightly slimy. My wife comes running out of the house, after she hears me yell "FUCK!" just about as loud as I can.
I pull up as much of the carpet on the driver's side as I can without dismantling the interior, and I not only see it, I smell it. The entire floorpan of my driver's side footwell, including most of the foam on the underside of the carpet, is SOAKING. No standing puddles, just very, VERY wet. This is not good. I start to panic, thinking it's coolant, gasoline, brake fluid, god knows what. I pull off a peice of the foam from the carpet, and squeeze it out into my hand. It's just water, but nasty, stinking, stagnant, under-the-sink water. Disgusting, but a relief.
So for the next 2 hours, I spend my time on my knees outside the car, with towels and a blow dryer, drying out the footwell of my car. I had to pull most of the foam off of the underside of the carpet, as it was slimy and pretty much crap from it being soaked for so long. I spend half the time gagging from the stench, but also relieved because I've figured out why my car smells like wet dog sometimes, and that I'm taking care of it. There's not so much padding under the carpet now, but with the floormat in you can't really tell. Eventually, I'm going to just replace the whole carpet, it's pretty stained.
I have no idea how the water got there, it sure as hell didn't get there and get that nasty in the 3 months I've owned it. I immediatley searched the floor for holes, rust, etc and found nothing, to my overwhelming relief. My best guess is that at some point, the window on the driver's side must have been left down while it was raining or someting, and a large amount of water ran down under the carpet. I contacted the previous owner, and he swears that for as long as he owned it, the only thing he ever spilled in there was a cup of coffee, and it didn't go through the floormat, which I believe, he's a good guy. So for the meantime, it's all dried out, and at some point I'll just have to find a good, used carpet to swap in.
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