Musty and damp smell without air-con

[T5Pete]

So, after many months (like 24) of having a progressively worsening musty damp smell coming into the van that could only be prevented by turning on the air con. I'd replaced the cabin filter and that wasn't it so i had to look deeper.

there didn't seem to be much info kicking about for issues without the air con being on, some on the golf forum but lost were about the filter and other odd theories. I found some vids on products you can mist through the system to cover smells and stuff but that's all $$, lysol seems to be a product but no available in aus.

So I started looking, pulled the bonnet vent off under the windscreen and stuck my hand in, yuk.. there was 1/2 an inch of slime, crud and fully wet damp composted organic matter in the section where the air come in.. hmmmm.. cleaned this out and washed it. then decided to squirt some cleaning vinegar and eucalyptus mix through and then squirted some mould killer in there for good measure with the system on full blast..

problem solved! actually pretty chuffed as its been annoying me for so long but because its been hot I'd kept the air con going.

so, basically the area above the battery where the intake is gets full of sh*t and stinks. good to know. its probably mentioned here somewhere but i couldn't find it.

also, when pulling the cabin fliter tons of crap comes out and I'm sure a better big finer mesh cage over the intake would solve that issue so I'm going to make one out of chicken wire and wedge it on there.

[riche543]

Thanks for this I'm having a similar thing with my t5 multivan , I shall take a look this afternoon,
Cheers
Riche


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[Sunny43.5]

Easily missed by many people , whenever I wash the van and clean around the door / bonnet openings I always have a look to see if there is a build up of debris inside the chamber for the intakes .

[Rebuild]

Is that the intake on the right of the first pic?
page 8 post 75

http://www.vwwatercooled.com/forums/f136/what-have-you-done-your-vwcv-today-38348-8.html

[Sunny43.5]

That honeycomb piece on the vertical wall is the air intake but if leaves get too stacked up it can rot and stink , also the same area needs to be kept clean so as the water can drain away to the road quickly .

[T5Pete]

Is that the intake on the right of the first pic?
page 8 post 75
http://www.vwwatercooled.com/forums/...y-38348-8.html

yup sure is... it's fully skank in there. I'm going to get some finer mesh and stick it over the whole area to stop the smaller stuff getting in there. thankfully the leaves that end up in the system dry out and don't seem to rot, they come out with the cabin filter.

[Sunny43.5]

A little trick with the internal filter , when I changed mine I got the vacumm cleaner and sucked out heaps of loose small debris from inside the filter area .