How to Clean a Car Air Vent

Having a bad smell in your car may mean you need to clean the car air vent. Air vents are often forgotten when cleaning a car because it isn’t easy to access them. Here are the steps to cleaning an air vent in your car.

Step One - The Vent

You will only be able to clean a short way into the car air vents unless you remove the vent grille, which can often prove impossible. However, to clean the front, take a Q tip and soak it in the interior car cleaner. If the cleaner is a spray, spray it into the Q tip.

From there, work the Q tip into each car air vent, making sure you get into all the corners. This will be a slow process and will require plenty of Q tips, especially if the air vents haven’t been cleaned in a long time. Clean all the vents thoroughly, pushing as far as you can beyond the vent grilles. It’s advisable to use a car cleaner without any scent or you’ll end up recycling it for a long time as air passes through the vents.

Don’t forget to clean the lower car air vents that are used to warm or cool your legs. These are under the dash and are not as visible, but it’s just as important to clean them thoroughly.

Step Two - Removing Smell

Car owners often clean the car air vents to improve the appearance of the dashboard, but a far more pressing reason is to eradicate a bad smell in the car. This will often be a stale or musty scent and although cleaning the vents might help, you will need to go further into the system to fully erase the smell.

You can start by changing the cabin air filter in the engine. This performs a similar function as the furnace air filter in your home and needs to be changed regularly in order to keep your car smelling sweet.

Its location and the type of filter needed will depend on the make and model of your vehicle. You can find this information in your car’s service manual.

As an alternative, you can also spray the filter with disinfectant. This will kill the germs within the filter and improve the smell. The downside is that you will have the smell of disinfectant in your car for a while.

Step Three-Drain

To complete the job, you will also need to clean the drain for your air conditioning. In most cars, the drain will be in the corners next to the fenders and will consist of rubber tubing, which should be black in color.

Squeeze the tubing to ease out anything accumulated inside. After doing this, straighten a wire hanger and run it up the tube to remove the last of the debris. When done together, these steps will vastly improve the smell in the car.