The Grossest Messes You've Cleaned Out of Cars

When I was in my early 20s living in Reno, I went on a big grocery shopping trip with my roommate in my 1983 280ZX turbo. We unloaded all the groceries and went about our happy food-having lives. It was late winter and temps were consistently below 30 degrees F. When it suddenly became spring and temps shot up to the 70s, there was a distinctive funk developing in the Z. I was always in the car with my roommate, and at first I just blamed the stench on him. I was like, damn, take a shower you nasty bum!

Within two days the faint stank turned into the noxious, gag-inducing stench of decomposition. It was like a family of raccoons who fed only on dirty gym socks crawled into the car and died, and that’s what I went looking for. What I found may have been worse.

In a deep corner of the hatch was a 10-pound bag of festering chicken wings and a pool of multi-colored rotting filth covering the entirety of the hatch space and its carpet. I had never, ever smelled anything like it. I had to throw away all of the carpet and strip all the insulation from the hatch and it took multiple bleaching sessions and a couple of months of airing out for the stank to finally dissipate. The car was completely undrivable for weeks.

After we went shopping, we did notice the bag of wings missing and looked in the car for them, but just figured we left them at the store or something. Our youthful hooning on the way home probably chucked the bag of wings into a corner where they weren’t immediately visible and the cold weather kept them frozen. When it warmed up, disaster struck. I didn’t eat chicken again for nearly 10 years.

From FriscoFairlane.

Wish I could remember all the items used, it was before my time, but my uncle would prank his friends by leaving nasty stuff sitting on their exhaust manifolds. Know he left a not very fresh fish that he let freeze (he put a lot of planning into his various pranks) on one during the winter so it didn’t smell too much until it got heated up and thawed, heard that was a really pleasant one.

My uncle did a dog turd in the vents over winter to another uncle of mine.

From CitronC, Keager1 and others.

I was in a salvage yard in central Delaware looking for a radiator for my ‘82 Fox-body Mercury Capri.

I spotted a Mercury Zephyr Z7 (also a Fox body car) which had been hit in the passenger side rear quarter, that looked like it might be a good candidate for a parts donor.

The radiator was intact, so a few swings of the socket wrench it was out of the car. Carburetor, starter and alternator all looked promising, so they came out as well.

Then i went into the interior to see if the stereo and speakers were better than what I had in the Capri. The stereo was an aftermarket Pioneer AM/ FM /Cassette player, so I decided to take that as well. The speakers were stock units, so i let them be.

When I reached under the dash to push the radio out, I felt something.... fuzzy.

WTF?

I put on my work gloves and felt around and the fuzzy thing seemed to be about the size of a loaf of bread. Since it was in the way of me removing the stereo, I gave it a tug.

Out came a petrified orange tabby cat. :-(

I figured it had sought shelter under the dash of Zephyr for some reason and died there.

I carried kitty to the weeds along the fence before taking my parts to the cashier. RIP Kitty.

From Earthbound Misfit I

I could go on about my wife’s former cars, but I’ll exchange a gross story for one that had me a bit shocked during a car cleanout: A loaded and chambered Glock.

Among my many horror stories of owning an E60 M5, cleanliness wasn’t a problem. Apparently, letting “trustworthy” friends borrow the car was. I’m telling this story in hindsight, since I originally didn’t know who the gun belonged to.

Former friend of mine had a mechanic shop, we were all part of a larger group of car buddies and he was the kind of guy who had plenty of money to spend and had no issues buying. One night at the shop, I offered him my car to drive in exchange for him picking up food, right across the street. In and out, he returned with no issues. Mysteriously, this friend of ours one day skipped town, leaving his entire shop behind.....just to set the tone of how shady he turned out to be.

About 6-8 months after he left, I was doing a full car clean-out, reached in the passenger-side seat pocket to find a small, loaded Glock. As mentioned, at the time, I had no idea who’s it was or how long it had been there. I secured it and put it in my safe for some time. At the time, many of my friends had kids, so it wasn’t uncommon for the parents/kids to ride out to events or the beach in the large exotic sedan. I’m amazed that none of the kids were curious enough to reach into the seat pocket and pull out the gun.

I had to ask around for a while before I got any real answers. After some digging, I figured out who it belonged to, although not why he put it there and forgot it. Apparently it was reported to the police as lost.

From Ninety-9

Oh, my poor Neon. I tried very, very hard to keep it clean. But, I was a heathen college-age male who lived with his parents, so I spent a lot of time in it. Eventually, the...patina that it received from my questionable habits increased exponentially with time. Food gets spilled, drinks get spilled...other things get spilled, and no amount of Meguiar’s is going to get those stains out. 14 years ago, I went to the birthday party of a girl I liked. Afterwards, a few of us were going back to her mom’s house (she lived at home) and I offered to help take some of the party supplies and leftovers in the Neon. That’s how a crockpot full of meatballs ended up spilling into the passenger footwell. For the rest of the life of that car, everytime it got hot in my car, it would smell faintly of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. The girl felt really bad about it, like it was somehow her fault. She’s my wife of nearly 8 years now, so I guess it’s OK now.

I did occasionally let my car fill up with trash to unacceptable levels. Again, I practically lived out of it. Things would get lost. Sometimes there were critters. Once a mouse got in my car and made a nest. Another time, a cat got in through a downed window, got into a bag of Taco Bell, then shit all over the interior. Also, I would sometimes give rides to my grandma, and later I’d find high-test narcotics that she’d put in her pocket, because you know who just carries around a few Oxys at all times? Druggies and old people.

By far the worst messes, however, were caused by my love of fishing. Ideally, you take something like a beat-up Ford Ranger on trips to the lake, but, well, you run what you brung. So I would toss rods and tackle boxes in the backseat of the Neon and go. Fishing can get gross, especially if you keep ‘em. One time, a container full of nightcrawlers (large earthworms) opened and they escaped, only to burrow under the carpeting and die. That was bad enough, but far worse was the container of chicken livers I left in the backseat after a catfishing trip (this is fishing for channel and flathead catfish, not the other kind). The container was sealed, but had been left unnoticed under a jacket for nearly a week...in July...in a car without AC. The following weekend, I had offered to carry cases of soda to a venue for a church event. I was tossing 24-packs of Coke into the backseat when I heard a “pop”. Green-tinted congealed chicken blood sprayed the rear of the Neon. The smell, oh Lord the smell. It was like Lucifer’s own diarrhea had been unleashed inside my car. I tried everything I could think of - industrial-strength cleaners, air fresheners, even considered finding the backseat out of another Neon (thank God I had a rear seat cover that I could throw away). It took months for the smell to reach tolerable levels. I dreaded rainy days when I’d have to roll up the windows.

These days, I just have the Caravan and all the weird shit my kid does in it. I live like a pig in there, too - I just spilt ranch dipping sauce into the center console trying to eat and run a few days ago. But at least I cover the middle seats and keep a rubber mat on the rear cargo area. I’ve been able to take care of it mostly. There was an incident a few months ago with an iced coffee that left a mess. I thought I had cleaned it up well enough, but after a few days I could smell that sour coffee-and-cream smell. I borrowed an ozone machine on a co-worker’s recommendation, and you know what? Those things are effing magic.

From dbeach84

I detailed cars for a little bit when I was younger. Our service included vehicle delivery. Pick up and drop off.

I was working on a Mazda 3 hatchback. Now at some point the owner’s kid must have spilled milk because there was a very faint whiff of it, but not really overwhelming. I was making my way around the trunk area with a compressed air hose, when I found the milk. Or rather, what used to be milk... I hit a pocket with the air hose just behind the rear seat, and the “what used to be milk” nastiness splattered everywhere.

The smell was horrendous...

I did my best to remove what I could from the areas that could be cleaned, but there was a porous under carpet panel that was pretty much ruined as the “what used to be milk” had clearly sunk into it over time.

It gets worse...

I still had to deliver it back to the owner. It was an unusually hot day, the A/C didn’t work, it was the middle of rush hour, oh, and this guy lived on the other side of town. Even though that grotesque panel was pretty much ruined, I wasn’t going to throw out a piece of someone’s vehicle. So in the hatch it went.

90 minutes in stop and go traffic, borderline retching the whole way, I arrived at his house. At least he was happy with the results, and apologized for the smell, but I needed a shower after that one.

From OutForARip

Not my car but a coworker’s car. He had a Dodge Shadow hardtop and during a grocery store run, a can of frozen orange juice concentrate had rolled under the passenger seat. In the heat of a Baltimore summer day, it cooked off and popped its seal and spewed its contents into the carpet under the seat where it soaked into everything including the carpet pad. That car was *never* the same.

From bfisch1629

One of my kids years ago had a blow out of his diaper while at the store. One of the good ones that somehow goes against gravity and shoots up their back. So I take him out to the car to clean and change him and plop his freshly squeegeed ass in the front seat while I do damage control. He then makes the face one does when cleaning out the pipes and lets loose a torrent of liquid hell right into the crack of the seat back and bottom. It ran EVERYWHERE. Onto the floor, the center console, and through the crack to the back. Thankfully we had leather seats and an ass ton of wipes to start the hours long clean up. 💩💺🤮

From sausagefingers76

Easy one for me. I was probably 8 years old at the time. So my grandmother had a burgundy Oldsmobile Delta 88. One day a random black dog showed up and she wound up adopting it. She decided to take it to the vet to gets its shots and I was to sit in the back seat with the dog to and from the vet to keep it calm and from jumping to the front seat. The trip there went ok. And then on the trip back the dog started whining and wimpering a bit.

The dog then proceeded to pee all over the seat. I automatically pushed down on the seat to lift myself off to avoid getting soaked by the growing puddle of dog pee, which did the exact opposite since this caused the pee to run directly to my hand. And then it started to shit. As it was a rather large dog it was rather big shits too, and this now rolling my way. I thought I was going to throw up. Grandmother rolled down the windows and floored it the rest of the way home. I was promptly gardened hosed off. Very traumatic.

From ROBOT TURDS

My cars are and have always been pristine. They get vacuumed every time they’re washed, and the interiors get wiped down at least every other month.

This story isn’t so much a gross find as a “what the hell is in that ‘food’ product”?

In the late ‘70s my uncle had a converted Chevy van: shag carpets, captains’ chairs for all the passengers, bubble windows, a fridge, and most important for our story: pockets in the side panels with snap-down lids.

In what would’ve likely been March 1979, my uncle takes his kids (my cousins) to McDonalds for Shamrock shakes. Six months later, he’s cleaning out the van. He opens one of the side pocket covers and finds a McDonalds cup. It has weight to it. He take off the lid of the cup to find that one of his kids had left their Shamrock shake in the van, back in March.

Here’s the scary part... the pocket lid had prevented it from evaporating. There was so little actual “foodstuffs” that made up the drink, it was still consumable.

From JohnnyWasASchoolBoy

I was rebuilding the shifter in my 1980 Spitfire. It’s a super easy job because Triumph was cool enough to make a removable tunnel panel between the seats, giving you full access to the transmission from inside the car. I decided to do some cleanup while I had it all apart...

Here comes the gross part. The original tunnel cover is made out of what I assume is cardboard. It’s got some kind of heat-insulation glued to the inside, but there are layers of cardboard. When I set the panel on the trunk I head a “tick-tick”. I picked it up again, and a few more “tick-ticks” happened. I turned it on its end behind the car, and a tsunami of dried turds came cascading out with a chorus of “tick-tick-tick-tick-ticks” as they hit the floor of my garage.

I took the tunnel cover straight to the garbage, shop-vacced the turds away and ordered one of those fancy new plastic covers from Spitbits.

Remember, friends. If you have an old car, there may be turds.

From Sid Bridge

In high school, I worked at a small mom ‘n pop used car lot as a detailer. We also had a very small fleet (about 5 or 6) rental cars. Usually Ford Taurus’. We had one not returned on the date it should have and was gone for about an extra week. We tracked it down to a local Native casino and took our spare key set to basically repo it back.

The guy had been hauling fire wood in the trunk and setting a gas-powered chainsaw on the cloth back seats. It had tipped over and spilled gas/oil mix all over the back seat which soaked into the cushion. There was no cleaning it. We had to throw the back seat away, replace the carpet and scrub the metal tub under the carpet. It still smelled.

We ended up selling it cheap to a chain smoker who couldn’t smell anything and just stunk it up with cigarette smoke anyway.

From mtonelli91

Once as a teenager, I was tasked with cleaning out a barn find 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible. The trunk had a layer of rat shit that was a few inches thick. I eventually found the corpses of two of the poopers. From nose to tail, each one was about the length of my arm and dead just long enough to smell like rotting flesh. Unfortunately, I added a healthy amount of vomit to the list of things I had to cleanup that day.

From thedevil

So my parents picked up a E350 based motorhome from a friend. Seemed like a good deal, good shape, clean, but the heater fan didn’t work. Do the basic upgrades, tune up, replace a few things to make it vacation ready. They ask me to look at the blower fan, which is pretty easy. 4 bolts under the hood and one connector. I remove the fan, see some mouse nest residue, get the shop vac in there, start vacuuming and suddenly hear a loud thud in the vacuum and squeaking. A LOT of squeaking. I shut off the shop vac, take it far away from the house and camper and crack the lid. No less than a dozen mice are scurrying around inside the canister. I simply go Nope! Close it off, tape the hose end off and hand it to my father. Tell him “Bucket of live mice from the camper, your problem now” and walk away.

From Drg84

Driving VW vanagon at night and some animal ran in front, I heard the impact but didn’t see anything, about a week later I noticed it really stank so I cleaned it inside and out. Nope no difference, looked underneath and nothing but it reeked and there were flies all over. Jacked the front up and found the remains of a rabbit/cat/dog/mongoose had gotten into the spare tire holder and was essentially a partial skeleton held together with maggots.

From sklooner

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• The Grossest Messes You’ve Had to Clean Out of Your Cars