The average American spends 60.2 minutes behind the wheel of a car every day. That’s about 4 percent of your life. It’s a pretty bad thing if you don’t enjoy the experience – and you’re definitely not going to enjoy driving as much as you could if your car doesn’t smell nice.

What do you do when your car doesn’t smell good? Chances are that you’re way too tired after your hour of driving to even think about troubleshooting the issue, so you hang one of those Christmas tree air fresheners on your rear-view mirror and hope that the smell will go away on its own. The smell isn’t going to go away, though, until you remove the problem at its source. What you need is a bit of information that gives you a starting point for troubleshooting and helps you avoid wasting time.

In some cases, it’s difficult to figure out what’s causing your car to smell bad. In other cases, though, it’s not hard at all because you’re the one causing the smell – and that’s where we’re going to begin in this guide. These are the 5 worst car smells and how to get rid of them.

Cigarette Smoke

Without question, cigarette smoke is one of the foulest odors that can permeate a vehicle. How can we be so sure of that? Just ask the people who buy used vehicles. On average, a potential buyer will reduce their offer on a used car by about 7-8 percent if it smells like smoke. The interior of a car is a small space, and the smell gets just about everywhere.

So, what can you do if you’ve caused your car to smell like smoke? The first step is easy: Stop smoking in the car. If you need something to puff on while you drive, grab a 510-thread battery from this site and vape instead.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to do something about the smell. If you want to take care of the smoke smell the easy way, bring your car to a local detailing shop that has an ozone generator and have them run the generator in the vehicle for a while. Ozone oxidizes organic molecules and can neutralize almost any foul odor. The ozone will permeate the enclosed car, and it’ll take care of the smoke smell very quickly.

Mildew After Heavy Rain

If your car smells like mold after it rains, it means that water is getting inside the vehicle somehow. That’s not just a bad thing because it makes the vehicle smell foul; it’s also bad because it means that you’re inhaling unhealthy mold spores.

Troubleshooting water ingress can sometimes be fairly complicated. It can be helpful to find an owner’s forum for your vehicle because it’ll be a good place to start your research when something goes wrong. Other owners have almost certainly experienced the same problem.

If you’re unable to locate specific advice for your vehicle, you’ll have to do a bit of hunting to find out how the water is getting in.

  • Start by looking for obvious signs of water ingress. If your trunk smells musty after rain, that’s easy – something is wrong with the weather stripping around the edge of the trunk. If the smell is inside the vehicle cabin, some signs that can help you pinpoint the source of water ingress may include a single foggy window, moisture around the sunroof or a puddle on the floor.
  • If you can’t find an obvious source of water ingress, you’ll need to learn how your car channels water from the roof to the ground. You’ll probably end up finding dirt, twigs or leaves in the drainage line, and removing the debris should resolve the problem.

After you’ve taken care of the water ingress, leaving your car outside with the windows down on a sunny day will probably be sufficient for taking care of any residual smell. If not, it’s time to visit a local detailing shop as we described in the previous section of this article. Ozone works just as well on mold as it does on cigarette smoke.

Old Food

If there’s a single golden rule about eating food in your car, it’s this: French fries smell great when they’re fresh and absolutely awful when they’re old. They also have a nasty habit of falling out of their little paper bags and wedging themselves into the tiniest spaces in your car’s cabin. That’s one reason why eating in your car really isn’t the best idea. When time is tight, though, you do what you need to do – and if your car is starting to smell ripe, it’s time to pay the price.

To make your car stop smelling like old food, the main thing that you need to do is remove the tiny particles that are causing the odor. To do that, go to your local car wash and vacuum the interior of your vehicle thoroughly. Make sure that you vacuum under the seats. You should also pay special attention to the cracks between the seat bottoms and backs. When you’re done, put bags of activated charcoal under the seats and leave them for a month or two.

In the future, try to avoid eating in your car if you can – and if you do have lunch in your vehicle, throw any empty bags and cups away afterwards.

Musty Dirt

If your car smells like dirt and old vegetation, it typically means one of these two things.

  • You’ve been spending a lot of time enjoying the great outdoors, and it’s time for you to vacuum your car’s interior.
  • You’ve been parking your car under a tree, and dead leaves are now blocking the ventilation system under the hood. Pop the hood and remove the debris. Note that this job can be a bit more complicated with some vehicles than it is with others. Some Audi models, for instance, are known to collect debris under their battery trays. It’s helpful to find an owner’s forum for your vehicle and check for other “gotcha” situations like this one.

Once you’ve removed the offending debris, you should also consider replacing your car’s cabin air filter because the filter will have absorbed some of the odor from the vegetation. A replacement filter usually costs around $25, and you can generally find the existing filter behind the glove box.

Burning Oil

Burnt oil is definitely one of the nastiest smells that can enter your car’s cabin, and it’s doubly unpleasant because it can potentially indicate a problem with your vehicle. Here’s what you should do.

  • If you’ve just had your oil changed, it’s possible that the mechanic spilled a little oil when replacing the oil filter. This isn’t a major problem. You can return to the garage and ask the attendants to take a look, or you can just drive around your neighborhood for a half hour or so and see if the smell goes away on its own.
  • If you haven’t done anything with your car recently, it’s probably leaking oil. In this case, having your car checked out right away can help you avoid a much more expensive repair in the future. An oil leak can potentially lead to catastrophic engine failure, so you shouldn’t delay on this.