If there’s one thing we know about things inside containers, it’s how they can end up outside their containers in a particularly aggravating fashion. When this happens inside a car, some not-so-funny stuff can happen, from big detailing bills to mechanical damage to irreversible psychological harm. Today on Autopian Asks, we’re talking about the worst stuff you’ve spilled inside a car.
If you’ve been following my ramblings for a while, you’ll know that I’m particular about my cars. I don’t let anyone eat in them or drink anything other than water in them, which means I don’t have many spill stories. However, this doesn’t mean I’ve always been a clean freak, but rather that I’ve learned from my mistakes the hard way.
If you ask a mechanically-savvy car enthusiast what the most pungent thing is inside any car, they’d probably say gear oil. This heavy, sulphur-enriched lubricant serves up a Desert Storm-tier nasal assault, and it’s one fluid you definitely don’t want to spill inside your car. Well, back in secondary school, I had to run my old diff oil to the proper recycling facility, which means two bottles ended up in my Crown Victoria. You can probably guess where this is going.
If you’ve never been inside the trunk of a Crown Victoria, it’s roughly the size of the Sydney Opera House. Commodious enough for three or four former associates, it’s not an environment conducive to holding one-liter plastic bottles soundly in place. In my head, the rear footwell’s rubber mat seemed to be a more appropriate place for temporary gear oil bottle transport, but I failed to account for one thing — cheap one-liter plastic bottles have a habit of leaking, particularly when they’re re-used to transport used fluid. Naturally, you can imagine my face when, while driving along, I was smacked across the face with a smell best described as that of robot excrement. Yep, I ended up with gear oil spilled all over the carpets of my Crown Victoria. Well, at least the air-con didn’t work, so the incoming summer would be windows-down.
Another category of fluid that’s not good to spill in a car is anything that goes bad with time. Say, milk, for example. I want to apologize in advance to my parents for sharing this story, and make it abundantly clear that this wasn’t their fault, but simply something that happened to them. I remember years ago, arriving home, only to find that a gallon of milk had leaked, drenching the trunk carpet of their then-late-model Hyundai Sonata. Needless to say, work happened quickly, pulling the carpet and sopping up any residual milk pooling in the trunk floor with paper towels. However, that trunk carpet stayed out of the car for a very long time. Not good, people. Not good.
So, what’s the worst thing you’ve spilled inside a car? Did inducing motion sickness in a passenger by telling them to “watch this” result in a tsunami of vomit sloshing around your all-weather floor liner? Did an evasive maneuver decant your coffee directly into your electronic shifter, requiring some serious repair work? Did you have a glitter incident? Whatever the case is, we’d love to hear it in the comments below.
[Ed note: Wanna read more about Thomas’ Crown Vic? You just passed the link! – Pete]
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
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A bucket of dryer grease from an Eagles club in Saginaw, spilled in an Astro Van. Not my grease, not my van, but I was in it when it spilled (the driver, Brad, had a few too many wobble pops and whipped it into the driveway a little too aggressively).
Afterwards sitting in the van was like living in a fish fry. Even after weeks of vacuuming, spraying, steam cleaning, driving the van was like sitting inside a foam go-box full of greasy fried fish. Hilarious the first few seconds then absolute misery. I believe it had an engine fire or something soon thereafter.
The best part was all of his buddies would leave packets of tartar sauce under the wipers when he’d bring it to the club!
My guts, after 4 double JDs and (shudders) a Zima.
Oddly, when a bottle of distilled water spilled in Mrs. Hand’s van, we got a lot of furry mold in a very short period of time.
Two gallon gas can tipped over in the trunk of my Oldsmobile Eighty Eight. It took 3 months of airing out the car for the smell to evaporate out.
My mom dumped a full Taco Bell Mexican pizza between the front seat and center console of the old Jeep ZJ. Much effort was put in to get that out quickly.
Gas dissolves quick Mexican food not so quick
Taco Bell is not Mexican, it’s far worse.
That’s why I get my “gas” at Taco Hell…it’s way cheaper than the “gas” pump!
I recently spilled a nearly full 25oz “Natty Daddy” all over my drivers seat. I must have nodded off for a bit while holding it in my lap.
When I woke up I thought I’d pissed myself. Nope… just warm beer thank god.
The stain doesn’t bother me (I’ll just get a cheap seat cover).
The stale beer smell isn’t an issue (the whole rear passenger seat foot well is full of crushed empties most of the time anyway) I can cover that up with cigarette smoke.
The most vexatious thing about it was losing a perfectly good beer.
Username checks out.
A friend had a 5 series BMW in the 1980’s and it had engine coolant spilled in the trunk. The carpet there always felt damp and smelled like coolant.
The rest of the story: The coolant didn’t matter because after a couple of years the thing was hit by a streetcar in New Orleans and that sparked a long battle between the city and the insurance company. The car was a right hand drive that came over from Scotland, so the repair shop couldn’t get parts and the insurance company didn’t want to pay for them to get the parts. So it was a huge mess and I’m not sure the car ever emerged from the storage lot. It’s probably still there 40 years later.
Four quarts of lobster broth, in the back of my ’94 Grand Cherokee Ltd (aka The Beast). Nothing could get that smell out until I ripped out the carpet.
Back in my 20’s I went to a golf outing for work. It was in July and scheduled to be in the 90’s that day. Had to be to the course which was 45 minutes from home by 830 AM on a Sunday (no small feat for me in my mid 20’s).
For breakfast, I brought 2 cans of Coke to drink on the drive. I only drank one of them. left the second on the passenger seat, as i was in a hurry upon my arrival to the parking lot to get into my golf shoes, get checked in, make sure the Boss saw me glad handing vendors, etc.
7 hours later, after the golf and the raffle and the rib dinner, I went back to the lot. I found the heat had exploded the coke all over the inside of my car. It was the stickiest, nastiest, all over-iest mess.
Did I mention this was an 80’s Fox body Mustang and the AC didnt work? While I did as much as I could by way of triage in that golf course parking lot with a jug of windshield fluid and fast food napkins, that ride home was capital MISER miserable
My wife’s cat rage-pissed all the way to the vet. She (cat, not wife) was in one of those cardboard single-use carriers that presumably contained most of it, but those of you with cats know that even a single escaped drop is more odor-concentrated than a black hole.
We’ve been over that car with enzyme cleaner and deodorizer 3x, and it still stinks.
Keep trying, you’ll get it.
I have had excellent results with enzyme cleaner but I use the probiotic, not just enzymatic type. The probiotic type has live bacterial cultures instead of free enzymes so cat piss is just food to them. The more food, the more the bacteria culture grows to take advantage of that food. Supposedly they go dormant when the food runs out and can reactivate if more food shows up later. IMHO this stuff is a must for anyone who transports pets or kids a lot.
That said I also had amazing results without the enzyme cleaner.
Once when my cat emptied her bladder on a friend’s vintage wool peacoat. Not the cat’s fault, she got locked in the room. So it was much more than a few drops. My friend was very gracious claiming the coat was old and ready for the trash anyway. We decided there was no harm in trying to clean it.
I blotted out the spot with paper towels, then soaked the coat in vinegar (which is fine for wool), then ran it in the wash on a gentle cycle with Woolite dark. I then blot dried the coat in bath towels and air dried it overnight. The next morning I put it in the drier using Dryel, a home dry cleaning product.
In the end the old coat came out looking and smelling like new! Honestly I was amazed.
And if you think cat piss is bad try partly digested, puked up rodent on plush wall to wall carpet at 11:30 PM. I was able to get that out with just a few gallons of warm water and my trusty wet/dry shop vac. It took about 45 minutes. To this day there is no stain, no smell, no trace anything ever happened there, even when examined with a UV light.
Seriously try a few more passes of warm water rinse and vacuum chased with industrial strength probiotic cleaner if the regular stuff isn’t working. Its also good for keeping your drains open by digesting grease in the pipes.
Huh, I’ll give it a shot. At this point the cat has more years left than the car, but I’m sure there will be more trips to the vet.
Go for it. The brand I used is Zieff but I imagine are pretty much the same as other brands. I used the unscented version as I hate perfumes. They do however make a pet stain and odor version if you want to try that:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KMG4T7K/ref=twister_B0D8TXM37H?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Also if you ever have a flea problem: Vaccum the carpets and sprinkle a 50/50 combination of food grade diatomaceous earth (FGDE) and borax onto your carpets and rugs. Make sure to rub it into the fibers with a stiff broom. Powder your pets with a light dusting of the FGDE only. Don’t worry, its harmless to them. I’ve used it on my cats for many years with no ill effects other than the rare sneeze. It’s a long used common treatment for digestive tract parasites like tapeworms and flea eggs. Give their bed a light dusting as well. The fleas will be gone in a few days.
Growing up in the dark days before Advantage and central A/C we had terrible flea outbreaks spring to fall. Flea collars helped a little, dusting the cat with poison too but only for a short time and I hated all that poison on my cat. After many years of annual suffering I read about boric acid and decided to give it a try. Within a few days the maelstrom of the biting bastards dropped to zero and they never returned. I became the family hero. My mom cried. Really.
Borax works just as effectively and you might already have a box. Its exact mechanism of action AFAIK is up for debate but basically bugs eat it when cleaning themselves and they die. It’s truly a wonder.
FGDE is basically microscopic shards of glass. It is a physical toxin, getting in under the chitin armor of bugs and slicing them up. To you and your pets though its just a fine powder, at worst an irritant. Avoid inhaling it and don’t get it in your eyes.
All of these have no shelf life and do not evaporate. Once applied they work for as long as they remain. So you’ll need to reapply after a few years as the stuff is naturally vacuumed and swept up or washed out but the cost is really, really cheap.
This combination is also highly effective against other bugs too like roaches, ants and clothes moth larvae. I now rub it it into the fabric of my wool clothes, all the nooks and crannies of my kitchen, etc. A 5/95% mix borax/sugar dissolved in water is the mix in many ant baits.
And to toot the borax horn further: a solution of borax and antifreeze is an excellent wood preservative. I recommend the much less toxic to mammals propylene glycol RV antifreeze instead of ethylene glycol car antifreeze. Wood treated with this stuff gets a lifetime of protection against insect and fungal attack. Just keep the wood dry as it will leech out eventually if it gets wet a lot. Painting the wood after treatment helps.
It wasn’t the substance, but the timing! My wife spilled a Sonic milkshake between the front seats of my Jeep TJ. It was right after I installed all new carpet after flooding the Jeep’s interior on a very deep water crossing. Literally the first trip after. We joke about it to this day.
The milk reminded me of the family’s Mercedes 220.
Spilled milk was not allowed for in the thick foam carpet underlay design.
Stripped out flushed out several times and the smell would cheese it’s way back. I think eventually it ended up at a detailers and was solved.
A can of frozen grape juice concentrate escaped my wife’s shopping bag and rolled onto floor just above the catalytic converter in my 2WD Toyota Extra Cab. It exploded on my way to work the next morning. Luckily it was under the drivers seat when it went off. I was able to pull the seats and carpeting once I got to work and rinse out the purple concentrate.
My sister barfed in the little corner defroster vent of my dad’s brand new 1960 Type 1 VW. That car stunk right up until the time he totaled it in a roll-over accident sometime in 1964.
A milkshake. Despite cleaning it still smells a bit like burning plastic 10 years later.
Hand sanitizer. It immediately left a permanent mark on my center console.
Some relatives from West Virginia came to visit us here in Connecticut one summer. They stopped at the beach in West Haven which I guess was their first experience at the ocean. While at the beach they picked up something which turned out to be a stack of slipper snails. They left it in their car overnight and I’m sure their drive back to WV didn’t smell very nice.
Just before Christmas last year we had a cold snap down to single digits F. I had left 8 two liter bottles of diet pepsi in my Juke.
Four of them exploded. On one of the bottles the neck blew off right below the cap.
I was able to get much of the light brown slush cleaned out before the weather warmed much but there was still enough liquid inside that before long the AWD system started throwing errors. Took it to the dealer and they found the AWD computer, which is under the driver’s seat, submerged in water.
Since the AWD system fails safe into FWD mode, I told them not to replace it and to only clean out the water. Fortunately, once dry the system returned to normal function.
There’s still some light brown staining on the headliner and probably some rust in the spare tire compartment but overall the aesthetic damage was minimal. We’ll see soon enough whether the aspartame residue attracts ants.
I left a gallon bag of frozen crappie in the back of my 81 Civic back in the summer of 1988 in Alabama. It thawed and the bag had a small hole in it. That damn thing stunk until I wrecked it 8 months later in Hueytown.
I closed the sample container thoroughly…or so I thought.
Unfortunately, it was a 24-hour urine sample container, and also contained a caustic powder. Happily, the uric acid neutralized the basic pH of the powder, but it stank to high heaven.
Worse, the vinegar and baking soda solution I used to deodorize the front of the interior did remove the smell, but replaced it with the smell of vinegar. I ended up using an entire container of baking soda to (eventually) return the interior to a (mostly) neutral scent.
Fish stew. In the trunk of my Daihatsu terios. After a few days in the sun (tropical climate) I was parked near a car wash, and seeing that my car was dirty (the exterior), an employee offered me a discount on a wash…
I remember when I got the car back the boss came to me and said “Can we talk in my office please ?”
I gladly accepted to pay twice the price they offered me before, it was still a bargain…
Battery acid.
Years ago the battery in my car failed, I got a ride to a parts store, swapped the battery in the parking lot of my apartment complex, and threw the battery on the passenger floorboard in a cardboard flat.
On the way back to the parts store I had to panic stop, the battery tipped over forward, I didn’t think anything of it so I didn’t pick it back up. After a minute or two I smelled something and realized my mistake.
I pulled over into a gas station lot, bought a 2 liter of 7up (because for some reason I thought that would neutralize battery acid) and a roll of paper towels, dumped all of the 7up onto the mess, then mopped it out with the paper towels.
The 7up served to dilute the acid well enough that I didn’t burn my hands and stopped the corrosion. The interior passenger carpet was ruined, but thankfully the spot was effectively covered by a new floor mat. I never checked the floor pan.
I still wonder what the gas station attendant that went to change that trash can liner found . . .
Yeah. Milk is the worst I’ve ever dealt with. My (then) 5-year-old tossed his cookies in the back seat of a rental car and we went through a lot of Febreze trying to get the stench out before we turned it back in. I hope Avis had more effective deodorizers.
I spilled a sizable bottle of homemade Thai Tea in the back of my girlfriend’s parent’s CR-V – we neglected to check if it was sealed properly. Luckily the plastic cargo liner took the brunt of it.
But I ended up pulling the false floor, the spare, etc. and dabbing everywhere like mad with a roll of shop towels I happened to leave in it combined with some non-optimal use of a disinfectant spray.
the tray and cargo floor went into the shower and left to dry.
I could probably find orange stains on the underside of the spare tire compartment carpet but otherwise it’s alright for now.
Spilled a large can of white paint. Didn’t have the top on firmly.
And I was working at a hardware store. It wasn’t my car.
Either Boone’s Farm, Mad Dog 20/20, or Thunderbird- I can’t remember which.
Strong runner-up: recycled Boones Farm Strawberry Hill
I learned the hard way that if you’re going to transport used coolant in the backseat, make sure the container has a fully locking lid or cap.
Took me months to full get it all out of the Mustang, and on really hot days, I can still faintly smell it and the carpet still feels slightly greasy.
Only two i can recall was one, a bottle of gear lube leaked out onto a floor mat. That was kinda stinky for a while.
Most memorable was pulled a supercharger from a regal we finnished using for demo derby cause why the hell not, although really wanted the whole damn engine.
Apparently the lube in those is like gear and good grief did it stank when it leaked out in the trunk of my hyundai.
Popped the trunk plug and degreased it and washed it out several times, still stank for probably about a year til it finally went away. It would remind you every so often in the summer like a back seat serial killer im still here.
Can attest. When I serviced my Miata’s pumpkin, for a week my hands smelled I soaked them in compost. Why does gear lube stink so bad?
Got me beat, but my god does it reek.
Although hafta say old atf is a close second.
The sulfur is what I was told. It has great lubricating properties under extreme pressure.