Said It Here

Do I have to strip my car interior if it rained inside?

You can usually dry a soaked car interior using a shop vac and fans or a carpet cleaner instead of tearing out the whole setup. Leaving the car windows open during sudden rain leads to completely soaked carpets, which requires drying and cleaning to fix.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Using a shop vacuum to suck out the water
  2. 2
    Running a dehumidifier inside the car
  3. 3
    Using a carpet cleaner to clean and dry the area
  4. 4
    Placing towels down to absorb moisture
  5. 5
    Running multiple fans to air dry the interior

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

So I left my windows open and now my carpet is soaked do I ahve to take out my whole interior or can I just shop vac it and put a couple fans blowing into it ?source ↗

StraightAd8196 · r/CleaningTips · 64 upvotes

had the same thing happen to me it was clear when i clocked into work and i left my windows rolled down it started pouring when it got busy didnt have time to roll down my window so i just used a carpet cleaner and let it air drysource ↗

Old-Construction-615 · r/CleaningTips · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised