Hi everyone, has anyone suffered from a smell of rotten flesh in the cabin of their Audi. i have recently endured this horrendous odour in my cabin even with vents closed, air con and heating swithed off, i have tried various quirks such as heating and air con full blast etc, used auto glym de-odoriser still no change.There areno signs of the floor being wet,  i even changed the cabin pollen filter and the air intake seems fresher but the smell still lingers. Has anyone suffered tye same issue and if so how did you resolve it. 2018 S4 Avant

thanks everyone

Hmm, I smell a rat.

Joking aside, there may well be a mouse, a bird, or some other rodent corpse rotting inside the car. Are there any rodent droppings in the car? In case you are not familiar they resemble black beads about 3 mm across.

Mice in particular will try to burrow into upholstery so it is worth taking the seats out of the car for a thorough internal examination of the stuffing. Also look under the carpets and look into any insulation under the dash. The same applies to the boot.

Good luck with finding the cause, and do let us know the outcome.

Could there be a dead animal trapped under the between the engine and the undertray? 

thanks steve, thats where i am going next😬

3 hours ago, cliffcoggin said:

Hmm, I smell a rat.

Joking aside, there may well be a mouse, a bird, or some other rodent corpse rotting inside the car. Are there any rodent droppings in the car? In case you are not familiar they resemble black beads about 3 mm across.

Mice in particular will try to burrow into upholstery so it is worth taking the seats out of the car for a thorough internal examination of the stuffing. Also look under the carpets and look into any insulation under the dash. The same applies to the boot.

Good luck with finding the cause, and do let us know the outcome.

cheers, car is dry n super clean with no signs of little furry creatures

17 minutes ago, s4quattro said:

thanks steve, thats where i am going next😬

Please keep us posted on how you get on. 

Could there be something behind the front wheel arch liners? 

1 hour ago, s4quattro said:

cheers, car is dry n super clean with no signs of little furry creatures

Follow your nose.

@s4quattro Did you ever get to the bottom of the smell?

yes embarrsingly, thanks to all who offered advice, might change my sign in name to nobheed.

Coudnt bear the smell amymore so took to halfords for a deodorise of the air con n technician said there was nothing wrong with the aircon, had a bit craic n techincian proceeded to pull a bag of lamb mince from under the passengers seat ( cant believe av missed it even when chaning pollen filter) must av been there at least two weeks urrggghhhhh !

sorry it wasnt more of a technical solution

Ha! at least you got to the bottom of it. And it didn't cost a penny to remove anything that had crawled in somewhere and died.

Sounds like a result to me, maybe a trip to the opticians though 😂

Pardon me if I snigger, but glad the solution was so simple in the end.

Glad you got sorted 🙂

I’d pull the pollen filter and check for anything trapped around it, then look inside the scuttle area for leaves or a dead animal. A quick clean-out usually sorts it.

I had a similar stink once and the thing that finally cracked it was checking the cabin filter housing for any trapped debris and giving the evaporator a proper clean with a foaming HVAC cleaner through the intake under the scuttle. After that, I aired the car with one of my favourites from https://nothingbutscents.com/blogs/candle-care at home to reset my nose a bit, since the smell tends to linger mentally even after the source is gone.

Edited January 29Jan 29 by Levant0s