Plenty of us like to drink coffee in our cars. Indeed, America is the land of the drive-thru coffee outlet, after all. If you happen to suffer a spill, though, you’ll want to clean it up promptly. It might sound obvious, but leaving it to sit is a bad idea.
This video comes to us from a fellow Australian named Garbage Time on YouTube. “I spilled a whole McDonald’s cappuccino in the center console,” says Garbage Time. “Like the whole thing went in there, and not a drop came out.” The natural human response might have been to soak up the worst of it, but that’s not what happened. “As soon as that happened, I just parked the car, and I haven’t driven it since.” Worse, we’re told that was six long months ago.
The video chronicles the cleanup effort of the Mercedes, which unsurprisingly involves pulling much of the vehicle apart. It’s a great look at just how much damage a single cup of coffee can do, and whether that’s something you can even come back from.
Have Mercy
The car in question is a 2006 Mercedes CLS500. Garbage Time bought it for its big V8 engine and its stylish black-on-tan color combination. However, soon after purchasing the car from a used dealer, it revealed a cavalcade of issues. It’s had a water ingress issue since it came into Garbage Time’s ownership, which has led to a nasty smell of its own over time. The surely-rotting coffee stain has only made things worse, “Cause of that water damage, I’ve always wanted to get in behind the interior, see what’s busted, and actually give this thing the clean it deserves,” he explains.
The rear seats are the first to come out, revealing plenty of mold spots underneath, along with some strange potting mix residue. We also see that some of the coffee did leak out of the center console and into the rear carpets. The bonus is that the car had also developed a serious fuel leak out of the top of the tank, as the seal around the left fuel pump carrier had failed. That left a pretty strong gas smell in the cabin on top of all the biological nastiness going on.
When the front seats come out, it’s even uglier. There are big black mold spots growing in the carpet that are clearly not friendly to human health.
You might think that this would be a relatively simple clean-up job that requires mere tenacity and elbow grease. Sadly, that’s not the case. As the disassembly of the interior progresses, the scale of the problem becomes apparent. Simply pulling the carpets and washing them clearly won’t be enough. The luxurious Mercedes has a thick foam layer laying under the carpets, and that foam had soaked up much of the coffee. Since it’s a dense, closed-cell material, it’s pretty impractical to rinse or clean. Whatever it soaks up is kind of forever.
Cleaning of the carpets is handled with a spray-extractor vacuum, which squirts cleaning liquid into the fabric and then sucks the dirty mess back up. It’s slow going, but it seems to do an alright job of cleaning the synthetic fibers. Meanwhile, plenty of F10 veterinary disinfectant spray is used on the carpets and the body of the vehicle to kill off every last mold spore.
As for the foam underlay? Well, that’s apparently the victim in all this. Being largely impossible to clean, the only decision was to try and hack away the worst parts that are impregnated with festy, months-old coffee residue.
It’s a highly imperfect solution, because the foam is molded to fit the body panels of the vehicle. Cutting it away will make the foam and interior carpets fit poorly in the interior. Given how far gone it is, one might hope for junkyard interior parts to show up, but there aren’t a lot of CLS500s out there, let alone specifically in tan.
For a car like this, it’s really hard to see another solution, though. While it’s a nice vehicle, there isn’t a lot of value left in a 2006 CLS500. Buying a new interior from the manufacturer isn’t cheap, if it’s possible at all—so you’re kind of left at the mercy of whatever you can pull from European wrecking yards that sell on eBay and the like. I faced the same problem when I was looking for parts for my own old Mercedes.
The coolest thing in the whole video? It’s not the muck, the mold, or the mire. Instead, Garbage Time shows us how to hack in cupholders from a different model into the original center console. The idea being that having a simple cupholder available would have eliminated the disastrous coffee spill that precipitated this whole mess. Sometimes, 14 ounces of spill prevention is worth many pounds of cure.
It’s hard to call this video a cautionary tale. It’s common sense that if you spill a milk drink in your car, you’re best off cleaning it up as quickly as possible. Leaving it to sit and fester for six months is an obvious recipe for trouble. Still, it’s kind of hilarious seeing just how much work it takes to clean up afterwards. Good fun all round.
[Ed Note: I’m just going to leave this here:
By how much was my life expectancy shortened? It’s unclear. -DT].
Anyway, tell us about your worst automotive clean-up job?
Image credits: Garbage Time via YouTube screenshot
Worst vehicle cleaning job? Any vehicle that’s been to Burning Man.
Well, that’s only if you’re silly enough to think it’ll ever really be clean again. You’ll always have playa coming out from somewhere no matter how clean you THINK you got it. It’s like shoes. You have to commit to that car forever being a playa car. (And the electrical gremlins and corrosion that go along with that.)
Is there something about dry lake beds that hurts a car? I’ve driven on a few dry ones but now I’m worried I should have washed my car or vacuumed afterwards.
Depends on the dry lake bed. This particular one is extremely alkaline and is a very fine powder, so it likes to corrode things pretty quickly and gets into everything.
For the author’s future use: the person behind the Dank pods/garbage time channel’s name is Wade and his friend is James. 🙂
I’ve always wondered! I’ve tried to reach out to him for stories a couple times over the years but he religiously guards his contact information, and one should respect that.
When we had to place my mother in a nursing home, we inherited her Camry. It smelled like a garbage dump. Turns out she developed an affinity for Happy Meals as she was losing her mind. I spent the better part of a day vacuuming up months-old French fries and other assorted food items, then shampooing the spilled soda and milkshakes out of the carpet and seats.
Wrapped up the day by digging through the car and recovering about 50 Happy Meal toys. Kind of funny and sad at the same time.
Last fall I picked up an AMC Concord for cheap at an auction. It had spent nearly 20 years parked in a garage on a farm in South Dakota. It looked OK in the photos, just in need of a deep cleaning. Unfortunately during that time it had become home for a couple of generations of mice and what I mistook as dirt was actually poop. The interior absolutely reeked and it was nauseating to even be near the thing.
I wound up just ripping out the everything, wearing a filtered mask and rubber gloves for the process. I had to repaint the floor and seat frames to stop the stench from wafting through. Not something I have any desire to go through again.
Didn’t buy it, but the worst I’ve come across is a Chevy Lumina that a used car dealer had for sale. It was on the cheap end of the Lumina pricing scale at the time, so I was wondering what was wrong with it. Exterior in great shape, interior looked very clean, average mileage, ran great. Once my wife and I showed up, the dealer did disclose that the previous owner had two large incontinent dogs that had urinated all over the rear seat, “But I’ve steam cleaned it 3 times so should be good now.” He had all the windows open when we showed up, and we had driven almost an hour to look at it so we decided to take it for a test drive. Rolled up the windows, and made it two blocks, rolled the windows back down and turned around to take it back. It was awful. Dealer begged us to take it, offered to steam clean it once more and cut the price in half. I’m betting it either went back to auction or straight to the scrap yard.
Not mine, but on some cold winter night back in the ’80s, my aunt borrowed my grandfather’s Maverick and went out with her small-statured boyfriend who rarely drank, but decided that was to be a night to forget. At the end of the night, the little guy didn’t make it when the car needed to be pulled over and his stomach told a very detailed story of its last day’s adventure to the passenger footwell, subsequently freezing into a modern sculpture “Little Man’s Last Meal”. My aunt begged my father to help her out with cleaning (she really must have been desperate as he never helped anyone without something in return and he never cleaned anything), so he told her to boil water and pour it over the mess so she could scoop it out. Like a moron, she did and he watched from the windows laughing. My grandfather ended up cleaning it and, IIRC, he got a Caprice shortly after, just like my aunt got another boyfriend.
Several years ago, my son was driving a Honda Fit we had for him and he OD’d, vomited, then aspirated the vomit. While driving. He was unconscious and choking, but fortunately a police officer had seen the car coast/crunch to a stop in the median and rendered/summoned aid.
The vomit-filled car then sat for a week in the impound lot with windows rolled up in 90+ degree heat. I decided I really didn’t need the car that badly, it had some body damage too, so I went and claimed my tags and otherwise abandoned it to the impound lien/auction process.
I guess what finally got cleaned up was my son, over 3.5 years sober now.
Thanks for letting me share.
God Bless
Decades ago, we rolled a large, very healthy skunk along the entire undercarriage of an 83 Omni. The skunk scurried away, but its’ blasts prompted almost immediate projectile vomiting, handily filling the defroster vents. As we had (allegedly) been quite recently involved in shenanigans on federal property, we couldn’t afford to risk the attention the two of us washing the car at 3am on a January morning might bring. Outside circumstances meant we couldn’t get the car away to clean it until it became unseasonably warm a few days later.
3hours and many quarters later, it was almost bearable. Thankfully, my buddy was willing to forego buying motor oil because he needed cigarettes & Pepsi, so it threw a rod a couple weeks later, and we didn’t have to worry about it. It was almost 3 decades before I could stomach biscuits & gravy again.
-all federal, state, and local properties were returned a few months later—unharmed, but much, much, cleaner
Back in the late 70’s in mid January (probably minus 20C/minus 4 freedom units), 4 young and stupid 20 somethings hop into my Dodge Challenger and head out to a party in Moose Jaw Sask. About 4 am and after much drinking and fun we pile back into the car and head back to Regina. My Challenger was a 440 six pack 4 spd with a hand rubbed black lacquer paint job, it was noisy, hot and rough riding. We had the heater running full bore so it was stifling. Everyone but myself was passed out and i was using the fender line road stripes guidance system to navigate. I noticed some scuffing in the back seat and one of the rear windows opened, followed by one of the rear seat occupants suggesting I pull over right away? As I am pulling over the other rear window opens as does the passenger window. I finally get the car pulled over and my fellow drunks pile out of the car and I examine the damage. Four streams of flash frozen racing stripes now decorate my car. It took about a half day of careful washing and a new paint job to repair the damage.
My kiddo had puked up pizza all over his bed in the camper. Being 40 minutes from home we bagged up the puke bedding, washed off kid in the bath house and booked it home. At midnight, of course. I “cleaned” by throwing away the affected bedding except for power washing and laundering the affected blanket. Then doing a water extraction cleaning on the inflatable mattress and the dinette cushions. That’s why kid gets the cheap bedding in the camper. No more stank. Kid was of course fine the next morning.
Coffee? That’s not much of a problem, Milk and sugar in your coffee? Not good. Cream in your coffee? Very bad.
If you are lucky, microbes will quickl digest what they can, make a big stink which dissipates and you are fine. If you’re not lucky and the process slows down you end up with cheese.
When you take an Uber, ask the driver about their techniques for deep cleaning the interior of a car. Chances are you’ll have an entertaining lecture. Well, probably not a good idea if you’re taking a date to dinner but still.
Picture this, spring 1992. My stepfather brings home an ’81 Chrysler LeBaron coupe from the towing company he worked for. Thinks it’ll be a good project for he and I to fix up.
It is a mess. It has been in a wreck and the driver hit their head on the windshield judging by the spider web cracks. The window in the driver side door is gone, just a few shards of glass remain. Car had sat in the impound lot for 6 months or so – stepdad had removed the seat and most of the carpet before I saw it, but there was still plenty of fluids (and maggots) in the floorpan that I had to clean up. It was the nastiest thing I had encountered at the young age of 16. I learned a lot though. Did body work, replaced a fender, header panel, and bumper. Got replacement power bucket seats from a junkyard and wired them in myself. Fixed the sagging headliner, put new carpet in the car, and put on a set of kick ass Crager mags that we got from the junkyard too. I drove it for a couple of years in college then traded up to something with a V8.
Years later my stepdad came clean and told me the truth. The owner had committed suicide by shotgun in the car.
Yikes, all that work for a 81 LeBaron 🙁
I LOVED that car. It was funky looking – it was a coupe so it resembled the RWD GM G body cars – and the 225 six it had was bulletproof (pardon the pun).
I would NEVER touch a car that someone died or killed themself in… out of respect for the dead and my own sanity. Good grief
Had she known, my mom never would have gone for it being my car. I was young and naive and thought it was cool to have a project car, especially a relatively rare one that nobody else had.
I think that’s the darkest answer we’re going to get to this by a country mile, my word
I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that story over the years. I posted a longer version in an article in the first couple of weeks of the site going live.
Like.. fucking hell. I can’t imagine beginning to start thinking of sliding that by anyone, ever. What the hell do you have to be thinking to push this off on anyone, let alone a kid? Jesus.
My stepdad was a Vietnam vet that saw a lot of shit, then he as a cop for 20 years and saw a lot more. He saw the car before knowing the story and heard the engine running and thought “this would be a good car for Kenny and I to work on and teach him things.” I think he was pretty desensitized to death, violence, and carnage at that point.
When I did learn the truth, I didn’t hold it against him. And I wasn’t even that surprised. He was trying his best to connect with his stepson and while in hindsight it was pretty horrific, I still appreciated the lessons that car provided.
Although he could have gone to his grave not telling me the truth and I would have been fine with that.
This story is one of the (very few) instances where I support arson. Sometimes, fire is the only answer
Dad owned a repossession business when I was in high school, and I had a built-in job as lot attendant. One of the responsibilities was to collect and bag up any personal property left in a newly recovered vehicle for the owners to come collect, even if they didn’t want the car. We found so many disgusting, gross things in people’s cars over the years—drug paraphernalia (I took to wearing gloves to try and avoid being stuck with needles), old food, dirty clothes, marital aids and bondage gear, and sometimes, piles of human and animal filth. When people lease a car they tend(ed) to treat it like garbage, and leave all their garbage behind.
My folks lived in Sarasota, Florida, during their retirement & most afternoons went to the beach. Parking is notoriously difficult, but my father “lucked in” to this wide open spot right near the beach. He parked my mom’s Chrysler Sebring convertible, top down, & off they went.
Dad didn’t notice that the “great spot” was under a lamppost. The gulls perched on the lamppost most definitely noticed the white leather interior of mom’s car & proceeded to “decorate” it all afternoon long.
When they got back to the car several hours later, dad realized why the parking spot was open.
I think he spent two days scrubbing gull poop out of the interior.
I hadn’t realized the Sebrings were so gull-able.
You. Out.
😀
Here’s your upvote. Now go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
During the pandemic, I found a dirty, dehydrated, flea covered puppy abandoned on the side of a country road. I grabbed him and put him in the foorwell of my daughter’s Vibe.
I took him home and announced “I found a dog. He is not OUR dog.”
We got him cleaned up, fed, and watered. He just kinda laid there most of that day, but the kids kept loving on him.
A day or so later, my wife took him to our vet who declared him mostly Rottweiler and about 12 weeks old. My wife called me at work and informed me of this. I was relieved because my wife DOES NOT LIKE BIG DOGS. No chance we’re keeping him. We’ve already got 3 dogs.
I got home and she was at her desk working with the dog in her lap. I said “I thought you didn’t like big dogs.” She replied “He looked sad.”
Anyway, his name is Frank and he now outweighs my 21 year old daughter.
Now for the cleanup story!
Frank had his first vet checkup about 6 months later. My wife drove and my daughter went with her to keep Frank happy. He was a very fearful dog back then and needed lots of comforting.
The vet visit went fine, but on the way home, Daughter had Frank in her lap. All 60 pounds of him. He started to panic, but in the front passenger seat of an Equinox, there’s not a lot of space to escape.
Frank vomited. Profusely. Aaaaaallll over my daughter. And the car. Many times. Then he peed. And pooped. Lavishly, as Torch would say.
Amazingly, none of it got on my wife, or anywhere but my daughter and the passenger seat area. You could tell by looking at him that he felt really bad about the whole thing, but what could he do?
Cleanup, other than sheer volume wasn’t that hard. I just had to get right on it and make sure I got EVERY nook, cranny, and crevice. Lots of scooping, scrubbing, and shop vacuuming.
Still the goodest dog.
13/10, as WeRateDogs would say on Twitter.
Great that you all were able to take him in like that.
Presumably the Equinox smells okay now since you attended to it quickly? Did you use anything special like enzyme-based cleaners from pet supply stores? Some of my cats have had the occasional bout of incontinence due to health issues and I’ve had good results with such products though I’ve not had anything happen on the same scale as what you (& your poor kid & your poor dog) experienced.
Citroen CX Familliale, under fives playgroup ( twelve kids, do not judge, it was ok then) and unwellness, probably norovirus. Sometimes fire is the only answer.
Fire was the answer regarding the car, not the childers, although a hose was involved.
In high school, I ‘cleaned’ a car somebody puked in that got left in the sun after by selling it.
I spilled milk on the floor of a car. I was younger and dumber so I tried covering the smell with odor eliminators rather then actually clean it. After suffering for six months, I realized that I could rent a carpet cleaner with the furniture attachment. After some very thorough cleaning, the smell was gone!
Not my story, but someone I worked with was tasked with cleaning the interior of a new car after five gallons of gas spilled in the back. Apparently the gas had filled every nook and cranny below the carpet. Even after stripping the interior down to the sheet metal, removing and reapplying seam sealer, they still couldn’t get the smell out.
The Belt Parkway, great views, but otherwise one of my most hated pieces of road. One of the kids vomited profusely in our 1998 Outback Sport (great little car). We cleaned it up as best as we could, a little more when we got home, and thought it was OK. But then, we gave the car to a relative in New Mexico, and in the hot desert, the smell came back, and he could never get it out. The car became known as Baby Vomit. Being a Subie with over 50,000 miles, it then blew a headgasket, and he gave it away in a year or so.
Matt Farah tells an even worse story of someone leaving a container of seafood chowder in the trunk of a Mercedes (I think early 2000s, but I can’t remember all the details), and then going on vacation for two weeks. They could never get the smell out, even with an interior deep cleaning, and the car was finally totaled by the insurance company.
Gather around, lads and lasses, for I’ll tell ye a tale of woe…
I went to a long weekend party in Alexandria Bay in New York. We were riding in my cousin’s Jeep YJ with a couple of girls, ready for a good night.
We got to the bar, and the girls were pretty and it was time to have fun. So, for some stupid reason, as yet unknown to me even though I did it, I walked up to the bartender and asked for a double of Jack Daniel’s. Could have had beer, but no, I had to go for the straight bourbon.
I had another few of those, and was starting to feel a little thirsty, and in need of a palate cleanser. So, when I saw something we couldn’t get in Canada but I had seen ads for.on TV, I figured “why not?” and ordered one.
That was my first, and last, Zima.
Later in the evening, I was piling into the back of the Jeep (roof attached) with what I thought was the prettiest girl in the bar. She was chatting with me, and I said, in a voice that sounded like I am possessed by a hell-spawned demon, “GET OUT OF THE JEEP! OUT OF THE JEEP NOW!!”
She looked at me, and the realization dawned on her face like an accelerated sunrise. She, being petite, made it out quickly. I, being not fucking petite in the slightest, was not so lucky. Everything came up. Everything.
My cousin got sober and drove us back to Ottawa. He tried to cover the smell of my vomit and stupidity with English Leather cologne he had stashed in the glove box.
If anything, it made it worse. He got us home and piled me into my bed.
A few hours later, he woke me up with a bucket and some cleaning supplies, and informed me that I was cleaning out his Jeep right then. Which I did.
That’s the story of my worst automotive cleaning job. And how I got the nickname “Captain Jack.”
Damn, that poor YJ/your poor cousin.
I would say poor me as well, but no pity for self-inflicted injuries.
Poor girls.
JD is whisky, not Bourbon, even though it takes like Bourbon. Don’t ask me why.
Bourbon is a type of whiskey. Jack Daniels is, for all practical purposes, a bourbon whiskey – mash bill of predominantly corn, sour mash process, aged in new American oak barrels.
It sure didn’t have time to age in my stomach.
They all look the same on the floor of a Jeep YJ.
Would you accept worst cleanup post automotive job? Front axle rebuild I did yesterday. 6 cans of brake clean, a gallon of kerosene, 5 rolls of shop towels, a box of gloves, 20 packets of grease and 1 tube and a gallon of gear oil. The grime, grease, and oil is EVERYWHERE despite my best efforts. I will be pressure washing this week.
Damn! And this was done on-vehicle (in the air I assume)?
Yup. But I didn’t do anything with the diff as it didn’t need it. Just drain and fill.
Not a single sidebar on a certain Buick Park Avenue here?! Jeeze…
Aside from hours spent getting coolant out of my Mustang’s rear carpeting (note to self – don’t transport coolant in your backseat and if you do, make sure the lid is on super tight and then some), my favorite is when a mouse somehow got into my father’s Explorer, died on the floor in the back, and apparently was left that way for days (?!)
My mom called me about it, I immediately tried to clean/deodorize things, but my father, paranoid about it happening again, refused to leave it in the sun with the windows open as I’d asked. Every time I’d do it, he’d go out, close it up and put it back in the garage. We’d get into arguments over it.
I was never able to completely get the smell of dead animal outta there but the (then new to the market) car bomb deodorizers, where you run the HVAC system and set it off, did wonders.
that channel is a go-to solution for people who is curious of
Important stuff, really.
Do you still have to media blast with walnuts if you’re already running hazelnuts?
That’s when you social media blast.
“Like & subscribe for more shenanigans like these!”
When I was but a young pup, the battery in my gave up. I had a friend run me to the parts store, swapped the battery at my apartment, and put the dead battery in the front passenger footwell.
On the way back to the parts store I had to panic stop and the battery fell over onto its side. A minute or two later I smelled something funny. Looking down, I realized the battery was leaking acid all over the floorboard. I stood the battery up, pulled into the next gas station I saw, bought a roll of paper towels and a 2 liter of 7-up, poured the 7-up into the floorboard (thinking it would neutralize the battery acid, cleaned the entire mess up with paper towels, and proceeded on with my day (with the windows down).
The acid melted the carpet, thankfully the spot was smaller than the floor mat, so I bought a new pair and eventually sold the car like that.
During the pandemic, my family went camping up at the local lake. I’d left my windows open while packing up my ‘96 K1500, and unbeknownst to all of us, a very pregnant barn cat jumped in and hid under the rear seat. You can probably guess where this is going.
As soon as I discovered her (next morning at the campsite) I rushed her home so she’d give birth back at the farm, but the damage was done.
Cat pee everywhere.
I laundered the carpet twice, to no avail. The smell was so horrific I actually had to take the truck to a detailing shop, and even they had trouble getting rid of the smell. I think they would up scrubbing the carpet 3 times before the cat pee smell was gone.
Oh wow, so you got it out?!
Eventually, yes. The shop was shocked at how pervasive the smell was. I was honestly considering ripping the carpet out since GMT400 carpet kits are a thing. It’s the one and only time I’ve ever had to take a car to get professionally cleaned.
On a related note, the ‘99 K2500 I got for free/rescued from death was absolutely disgusting inside when I got it. I mean, filthy. Gross enough that driving it home after o got it running required me to wear gloves and sit on a towel. Still, it cleaned up easier than the cat piss truck.
.