akaris

It was a nice evening and I made a quick ride with all windows down and the sunroof open.

And I forgot to close them.
And it rained all night.
In the car.
Horrified is a good description of my reaction in the morning.

The dashboard, shift lever, MMI controls and front carpets were DRY. Front seats and center armrest: soaked. Back seats: soaked. Back carpets: seriously soaked, with a visible puddle of water on them. Oh, and the whole headliner: wet.

I immediately removed as much water as I could with towels and brought the car to my local Audi dealer. They vacuumed it with a carpet vacuum and let it dry for the day. They told me it would take a few days to see if I get any electrical issues due to corrosion of stuff under the carpet. Other than that, they were not too worried about a soaked, almost new, S4.

It's been 36 hours now. So far I didn't have any electrical/electronic glitch... except one issue with my bluetooth micro; but I'm not sure, I'll test again. The car is (seems) all dry, EXCEPT for the seats. Tonight I realized that my seats (front and rear) are still completely soaked with water, and I don't think they're going to dry by themselves anytime soon. Problem is I have no idea of what I should do.

Tomorrow I'll make a few phone calls to see if I can find an experienced place that can help me, but I'd definitely like to get a few advices!. What can/should be done to prevent damage to seats/carpets/headliner/electric/electronic, mold/mildew/odors? I Googled quite a bit and found many cases where they simply tore the car intrerior apart to dry everything :\

Thanks for your advices!

stillwaterS6

Try to shop vac the seats.

Then, treat it like a wet cellphone. But a larger Rubbermaid contained used for sweaters. Large, shallow and big. Go to Costco and buy 50lb of rice. Put in the Rubbermaid and close the windows of the car with the rice in it.

You've just made a gigantic silica packet. Except this one you can eat! (Jk. Don't do that).

You could also run a dehumidifier with the car sealed and just an extension cord hanging out.

I own a convertible and part of that ownership is being caught in the rain. This is how I fix that.

AutoNuvo Boston

Shop Vac and run an air mover through the vehicle. Once it all has been dried and decontaminated, I would recommend letting an O-Zone machine run for several hours inside the vehicle to kill any living bacteria and sterilize it.