eolson64 New-tral

Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Durham, NC Posts: 9

Update Thanks for all the advice. Here's an update.



I peeled away the fabric seat covers and there was no mold or dampness in the foam. That was good news because it suggests this is all just surface mold. The bad news is the carpet under the seats was very damp--not wet, but damp.



Flashback. Many years ago when I was parked outside in a downpour and the floorboards filled with about a half inch of water, but no mold formed. (Somewhere on this forum is a thread about cleaning out drain tubes with a Trombone brush. It's a genius approach.) My Miata is a 2006 and the conclusion was that the drain tubes on that model don't have sufficient diameter to handle heavy rain. The story is that Mazda got wise to this drainage problem and increased the diameter of the tubes in later models, but I don't know if there is any truth to that. After that episode I learned to park it under a roof during heavy rain. I also learned to keep the drain tubes clean.



Back to the present. I wiped everything down with some citric disinfectant wipes. That took the fuzz off. Then I went over it with windex and a rag. Then I sprayed everything with Lysol and let it sit overnight with the top open.



Next day it looked a lot better, but it still smelled damp. So I went and bought some Zinsser Mold Killer and Deodorizer. I hadn't yet seen the suggestion to buy Concrobium (Thanks 2002tiitomx5). I doused everything pretty good with that yesterday and again left the top open overnight.



This morning I was surprised to find how damp the interior still was. The seats were damp, the carpet damp, even the documents in my glove compartment were damp. My sunglasses, in the case, had fog on them.



I grabbed a towel to sit on, drove to work, and the car is now sitting in the middle of the parking lot on this bright, sunny, 82-degree day, with the top down of course. I bought two small buckets of Damp-Rid that I plan to keep in the floor when I close everything up.



I already use 303 on the interior and I'll be sure to reapply a good coat of that once everything dries out.



Still trying to figure out where the moisture came from. torqued, I have the same setup, gravel floor with metal carport that is closed on two sides so it stays pretty dry in there.