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How do I dry out my car?


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This weekend, the stuff on the floor of Roxanne was floating. I got stuck in a BIG mudhole, and now the carpet is totally soaked and muddy (I opened the door because I wasn't thinking), and the rear storage areas are still wet after I removed all of the water that I could. I am terrified of my floor pan rusting out if I don't dry everything out really well.

 

So far, I vacuumed everything at a carwash as best I could, I soaked up all the water I could out of the carpet and storage areas with rags, and I was able to get into a heated garage to park overnight. Aside from driving around for hours with the heater on and the windows partway down, what can I do to dry out my car?

 

Oh yeah, and I forgot to bring my camera, so no pics of my car buried above the rear bumper.

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pull the carpets and get them dry. You may have to remove the fuzzy insulation underneath, as that takes forever to dry. My carpets are plastic on the bottom, so whatever is under the carpet won't dry unless I pull them. Yours might be too. That's the only way unless you like mold and rust.

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Mmmmm, smell the composting bogwater tea!

Carpets, padding, and maybe even the tar pads gotta come out. Wash the floor pan with soapy water and then rinse with bleach water solution. A few days and or nights with an electric space heater in the car should dry it out. Pressure wash the carpets, drip dry in a warm place or maybe try a commercial tumble dryer. You may never completely get rid of the funk but the faster you clean and dry things out the less mildew issues you'll have down the road.

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Oh man, I don't wanna strip the interior. I think I'll vacuum like crazy again, then pick up a cheap space-heater and leave that in there every night for a week or so, and drive around daily with all the windows down for a few minutes.

 

If I'm gonna have to take the carpets out anyway, has anybody used that brush-on bedliner in place of their carpets?

 

Wow, you posted about the bedliner as I was writing this one!

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Guest subu luvr

if youre not gonna pull the carpet

(take it to the carwash and blast it on the floor mat hooks)

and throw that fuzzy crap called "shoddy" away,

you can use newspaper, dont ball it up,

just lay it out and put some weight on it,

once it gets going it works well.

seems adding few layers as needed works better than replacing a single layer repeatedly.

once its saturated, toss and repeat.

 

 

best way is to pull and scrape though

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The herculiner rebate is good for 3 more days, but I think a quartwill probably do your job. But a quart is half the price of an entire gallon. Decisions. Where did you go bogging on Sunday? Saw you coming back into town sporting fresh mud.

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After swampage, the carpet is memory. You can probably get away with cutting it at the bottom of the console so you can still have it look like you have carpet. Get a couple of big rubber truck matts for the floor. They'll cover most of it, and kill road noise really well. That's at least the cheap way to go, 20 bucks or so. I've done it that way in all of my offroaders.

Bedliner if you have the money, gonna be the best solution. My neighbor across teh street has his entire jeep floor bedliner'd looks sweet.

Good luck

Eric

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