very smelly golf

[Justin Jones]

good afternoon all, sorry my first post is an i need help post , my son has a mk6 golf 1.4 tsi which he has done all sorts to but recently his car interior smells of death , my son is in the army and travels home most weekends from tidworth to south wales and when he gets in the house he has to strip off and change his clothes because the smell is in his clothes , he cleans his car religiously every week with snow foam and an unbelievable amount of waxes and polishes ,so where is this fousty dirty smell coming from , when he goes over to pick his little girl up she smells the same as him when she comes in , he will pay anything to get rid of the smell or if someone could point us in the right direction , all his carpets are dry and dirt free although he does smoke in his car , i took out the pollen filter around 6 months ago and put a new carbon activated one in , i checked it this morning and it still looks quite new , any help would be massively appreciated

[zollaf]

unless one of his 'mates' has left a present hidden in the car, i would suspect the air con. buy 2 cans of air con cleaner. you want the sort that you position in the back, then set off and they eject their contents while the car runs with the air con set to recirculate. the gas will kill all bacteria and should leave it smelling fresh as daisies.

[rowdy-999]

Could be an undiscovered leak resulted in mould under the carpets.

[Justin Jones]

many thanks for the above just bought 2 cans of stp from halfords and just followed the instructions ,instantly smells better and i also ordered a new cabin filter which i will change next saturday when he comes home

[niall campbell]

does he have the heater on recirculate ?

On the Polo, the recirculate flap is below the dash/ glovebox nearest to the wheelarch

The motors for the flaps can fail, so the recirculate light maybe off, but the flap stays wide open, it just falls down.

The recirculate flap will shut automatically when the vents are on demist or you put the car in reverse, meaning the yellow light for the recirculate will be out

That may be why the car is smelly, no fresh ait is getting into the car.

I just taped my boys polo flap up, switching on & off the recirculate flap is working when looking in passenger footwell