How to dry the inside of a rain soaked car?

[Salgar]

I've had a mare, staying in France last night, there was a deluge and somehow instead of closing all the windows with the remote, apparently I opened them all in the dark and didn't realise until this morning when the B&B owners asked why we opened our car windows this morning (doh)

Anyway, does anyone have any tips for removing water from a car seat? Any vaccum I can get my parents to buy today before we get back? Or any other product that will prevent mould hell?

Thanks

[DonkeyApple]

Vax machine. Go and rent one and just suck out all the water from the seats and carpets.

Once you have all the water out that is going to come out I would then do a chemical clean with the Vax as your car will stink up very quickly if you don't attempt to remove as much muck from the seats and carpet as possible.

Obviously you then need to drive with all the heating on and the windows down and also put a fan heater in the car overnight.

[jamiebae]

Engine running, heater and a/c on full blast with the windows open a fraction will do the job eventually.

[996TT02]

Use a towel or chamois leather first pressed into the (presumably) cloth seat. Then use plenty of kitchen roll. Not much else to do except lay down a dry towel on the seat when driving the car and then leave it parked windows down in the sun. Oh and use the aircon when driving, too, windows shut.

You should be fine.

[Superhoop]

Hire a dehumidifier and leave it in the car running for as long as is practically possible.

[DonkeyApple]

From a safety perspective, don't forget that for a while now your car is going to most up extremely quickly and at the most inconvenient times. You'll need to run your aircon as well as heating if you have it.

[ArsE92]

DonkeyApple said:

... put a fan heater in the car overnight.

That can only end well.

[jamiebae]

I dried out the back of a soaking wet Transit van (leaking seam in the roof skin) with a 240v 2kw fan heater, but I don't think I'd want to put one of them in a normal car unattended for long.

[DonkeyApple]

ArsE92 said:

DonkeyApple said:

... put a fan heater in the car overnight.

That can only end well.

Hmm. It's a fan heater, not candles. Obviously if someone has no common sense then little that they do ends well.

[andy-xr]

Any wet and dry will take most of the stuff out, get something that has a fairly high powered motor on it if you still can with the EU regs on such things. Vax would be good but a cheaper model that has a similar power would work

If you have aircon, leave the car idling with the aircon on, heater set to max with the air source set to recirc as opposed to external

[Spare tyre]

airflow and somewhere for the water to escape

parked in the sun with the windows / doors open will do wonders

even just driving along with all windows open a fraction will see quick results

[kambites]

When I managed to leave the sunroof open on my Corrado, I just put it in the garage with a fan heater pointing in through the drivers' window and the boot open. That dried it out in a few hours.

[littleredrooster]

andy-xr said:

If you have aircon, leave the car idling with the aircon on, heater set to max with the air source set to recirc as opposed to external

Surely you would want to get rid of the moist air, not recirculate it?

[kambites]

littleredrooster said:

andy-xr said:

If you have aircon, leave the car idling with the aircon on, heater set to max with the air source set to recirc as opposed to external

Surely you would want to get rid of the moist air, not recirculate it?

The moisture gets dumped by the air-con condenser, usually out of a pipe on the bottom of the car. If you don't set it to recirc, you end up drying the air coming into the car rather than the air already inside it.

[Chapppers]

This thread seems to have a few people in it who've neither looked out the window recently nor seen the weather forecast for the coming week...

Thinking outside the box, maybe he shouldn't be trying to dry the car so much as displacing the water, perhaps filling the car with a couple of gallons of WD40 would help the situation?

Idea 2) What's the one thing water doesn't like? MORE WATER. It's nature's most competitive fluid. Get a hosepipe in the window and scare the current water out of the seats.

[anonymous-user]

I did this to my Volvo. After vaxing, airing and getting the worst of it out I bought some big bags of Silica Gel bits very cheap off the internet. Unloaded them in to bowls and placed them all around the car over night every night for a few weeks to slowly soak all the remaining moisture in.

In fact I now leave a couple of bowls full in my TVR when I put it away for the winter just to ensure it keeps nice a dry inside.

[RizzoTheRat]

Once you've got the worst of it out try camping shops, most will sell dehumidifier crystals as caravanners tend to use them over the winter.

[DonkeyApple]

kambites said:

When I managed to leave the sunroof open on my Corrado, I just put it in the garage with a fan heater pointing in through the drivers' window and the boot open. That dried it out in a few hours.

Yup. The key is to keep air flow moving. A bit of heat helps with evaporation but a normal fan will do almost as good a job.

[BIGDAI]

FullofBeans said:

I did this to my Volvo. After vaxing, airing and getting the worst of it out I bought some big bags of Silica Gel bits very cheap off the internet. Unloaded them in to bowls and placed them all around the car over night every night for a few weeks to slowly soak all the remaining moisture in.

In fact I now leave a couple of bowls full in my TVR when I put it away for the winter just to ensure it keeps nice a dry inside.

+1 ^^^^^ - cheap as chips here : http://www.homebargains.co.uk/products/824-silica-...

[Garvin]

Not that I've ever had to try it myself but I'm informed cat litter (unused of course) works wonders in these situations - readily available and relatively cheap.