Has anyone had luck with removing an awful mildew smell with the a/c on? Mine is horrible. From what I can see, there is no cabin filter which I've experienced in the past on other cars to be moldy/mildewed.

 

Yep. Should be fairly easy to at least make it better. My friend bought this purpose made stuff to do the job (an orange smell/product, can't remember which) but I think mine comes out better, and is easier with typical household products.
Use this method at your own risk. I never had an issues but don't want to take responsibility for yours :-)
Get 1 can of Fabreeze Air Effects or Lysol Nutra Air and one bottle of regular Fabreeze.
First, I put the fans on high heat and high (not recirculate) and slowly spray 1/2 the aerosol can into the cabin intake under the hood.
I let that run for a while.
Next, I turn on recirculate and do the same for the inside air intakes. You will literally be choking on the fumes by the time you finish the can, and can actually see the vapor coming out of the vents.
Make sure when doing both that you change from feet to vent to defrost to really get all the vents.
After I'm done with that, I really saturate the ground around the intakes with Fabreeze, and spray a bunch into the intake as well. Give it 5 minutes on high heat to dry out and it usually smells 95% better and actually lasts.
I'm sure you could use regular Lysol if you have moldy type issues as well.

 

great! I'll give that a shot. Thank you

 

Just be careful with the aerosol stuff as I'm sure some of them are flammable. Again, I never had any issues but want to at least call out possibly dangers. I will actually be doing mine as soon as it warms up too ahead of A/C season!

 

This has 2 possible causes; a plugged Evaporator drain is the main cause. Also, leaving the Recirc in the closed position will cause it.
Most dealers use a cleaning agent that is heavy with clorine to kill the mold. The only sure way to eradicate it is to disassemble the Evaporator case and clean it.

 

To keep the smell from re-occuring:
Most of the time this smell comes from your a/c evaporator. When you run your a/c or defrosters (which can sometimes trigger the a/c), the evaporator becomes moist, however, when you get home, you turn your car off, and the fan turns off, hence that moisture sitting in there with no blower to get rid of it (which gives you that lovely smell). How to fix this? Turn off your a/c a minute or so before you get to your destination and leave the blower on so it allows all of that water in the evaporator to dry out.

 

If you live in someplace that is swampy most of the year, sure that MIGHT do it. But this sounds like clogged evaporator drains. Those need to be cleared first. Then one can go the disassembly route to clean, or with a fogger depending on whats available.

 

ok, I'll take a look. When I ran the heat I didn't smell anything but last week it got up to the mid 80s and I turned the air on low and I about gagged from the smell. It's not too swampy here, gets a little humid in the summer time but I wouldn't call it swampy.

 

Chances are good that when you find the clod in your evaporator drains, you're going to get a bunch of stank water coming out, so stay clear when you do it. There are two of them, underneath and behind the firewall.

If they don't want to drain because they are clogged too badly, you can try taping together enough reducing tubing or whatever you have handy to a shop vac and try get the vac on the drains.

Chances are good that once that stank water is out of there, things will smell about 75% better. If you run your air a bunch of times in high humidity (enough to get the coil good and wet and see your drains running) you just may get away with the smell going away all on its own. If it's still funky, you'll have to try some other things, but on many cars (certainly not LR specific) just getting the thing drained and run a few times will take care of most of the dead body smell.