Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

Unfortunately my extremely mint, absolutely rust free amazing condition new L400 import had a smoker in it formerly.

Taking it in for a complete interior detail and smoke treatment (vaccum & steam clean) tomorrow, followed by a couple ozone treatments at home. I'm throwing out all the extra foot carpets and rear carpet going anyways as putting in a custom floor so I'm hoping I can eliminate as much of the old smoke evidence as possible.

My question for the forum is - I know there is no interior air filter on the L400s but is there anything else in the A/C or Circ system I should think about taking apart and cleaning? Circulation fan ? I read something about the A/C condenser collecting dirt if anyone has open this up can can comment?

I'll take off vent covers and thouroughly clean inside vents too.

I looked through air system manual and found some other info that there is no interior air filter on L400s.

http://www.delica.ca/manuals/L-400%20Ma ... IR_CON.pdf

FYI - not sure if I'll do this, but after a lot of research I tracked down these two products which are natural and enzyme based, rather than petrochemical (and cancerous). Save the forum some time.

Enzymes help to kill any odors, mold or otherwise in these older vans we're all driving. Petrochemicals generally mask the smell.

Contacted them and they will ship to Canada. No Canadian distributors. Everything else available is petrochemicals, including stuff at Crappy Tire.

Van in for interior detailing smoke removal today and have an ozone treatment all set up for Wednesday night. Cross fingers it works.

There is a regular product here and something specifically for the A/C system. Both in link below from Ultrashield.

http://ultrashield.com/products_OE.htm

So I did a full interior detail w shampoo + steam clean, and then rented an Ozone machine and ran it for 10 hours in my Van last night.

It was NOT A HIGH POWERED OZONE MACHINE, as apparently, you should only use those for 2 hours max.

I can't smell anything now, so pretty happy. Ultimate test will be sensitive lady's nose of course.

Pretty happy it worked.

FYI - I'm going to be pulling out my complete, very mint, recently cleaned L400 rear carpet and replacing with garage flooring. My L400 is really nice and was hardly used, so I have all the original footmats too, but I won't need these once I do my floor. I need to keep them all for now to help me measure out my L400 custom flooring, but they will be available to a local (lower mainland) L400 owner in a few weeks if you're floor is quite trashed. I have the swivel bench seat. Because there where so many floor mats, the carpet looks new!

i'll post detailed pics of my custom floor install and others may want to duplicate this. Same thing I did on my L300 except I'm simply going to lay the flooring flat on top of the insulation foam and not glue this time so I don't get stressed out about water seeping underneath and molding. I glued my L300 floor and did a sweet "up wrap" on all the sides which was very money. Won't do that this time. If water gets through I want to be able to lift it up and dry it out.

Ciggy smell still there but was still worth the try with the steam clean and ozone.

My Lady doesn't like so this means I'll have to do a complete swap of the seats, headers and fabric side trims - this is where the smell is trapped. Too bad as my interior was in really nice condition ex-smell.

....now to find a van ready to part with decent interior....not in a rush with this. May need to be a 94-98 L400 series "1" low roof for the headers. Mine is also a low roof. The roof header part may be a bit tricky.

If you have any intel let me know!

Pulling all the fabric is pretty extreme and is going to be a massive pain and there is the chance that this may not solve the problem. There are lots of products that may help like Febreeze or something. The best remedy is going to be time and airflow in my experience. Put a couple of boxes of baking soda in the van and wait a few weeks and see how it goes.

Ralph in Winnipeg

Thanks. Have an open bag of Charcoal in there for a few days now which has already helped. My guess is 70% of smell is in front seats, 20% bench/rear seats and 10% headers + fabric trim.

Quite a lot of L400s around Vancouver that get written off so not such an issue to do the swap. Also not a in a rush to do this.

I looked around and Bamboo Charcoal actually has the best odour absorption properties. These are the most useful product on the market trouble is they don't ship to Canada but if you cross border to the US frequenlty it is not an issue. Will be picking up a couple of these. Company out of Seattle.

https://purggo.com/

My Canadian Tire bag of charcoal cost only $3 though.....

Found a industrial bulding detoxifyer with an “oxidant” machine they use to cleanse buildings after fires. He prefered to remain ananomous as its a bit of a pain to arrange to run the machine on cars. Car still airing out but so far seems so good. This is much better than usuing an ozone machine. Cross fingers, the “Jasper” seats in my van are in awesome condition if the smell can be cleansed!

If you are also really desparete PM me and I will let you know who I used. Apparently a lot of Delicas from Japan are smokers

I had the same issue with my van, and I am athsmatic and hate cigarette smell. I used vinegar, both for wiping down and leaving small bowls of vinegar with cloth soaked inside the van. Maybe took a couple of weeks, but zero cigarette smell after that. The vinegar somehow absorbs the tobacco molecules from the air.

Thanks - yah, I've been trying that and seems to be getting better. Got two "sugar bowls" with vinegar that clamp down closed with tight seal and leave them in there open at night and then just throw them into the drawer under the passenger seat for the day.

Seems to be working as final solution. I actually tried both an ozone machine and, in-hindsight, a hydroxly machine for 3 days to get rid of the smoke.

Anyone with this problem in the future should skip the ozone machine and go right to the hydroxl machine (this is what they use to treat fires in buildings and works better than ozone with less risk - basically an OH ion, highlgy reactive).

I rented mine at Hazmasters in Burnaby. The vinegar is needed to get the final smell out that is likely embedded in the foam of the seats and oozes out now only when Van in the sun.

https://www.hazmasters.com/