How a biohazard car gets dismantled and deep cleaned

• AMMO NYC is a car detailing service that manufactures car cleaning products.
• Owner Larry Kosilla shares his technique for dismantling and restoring a biohazard car.
• His process requires him to remove the entire interior and completely disassemble the doors, seats, and carpeting.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Larry Kosilla: Today we're going to go over the step-by-step process for cleaning a bio mold car. So, to detail a car where we're wearing full PPE gear to protect ourselves as well as face masks, so when we get in the vehicle to clean things we're not bringing it home to our families.

Disinfecting

Larry: So, for the first step, we had to use chlorine dioxide gas. Now, what that does is it sort of kills all the microbes that are in there causing a lot of the smell. But this whole process is just about allowing a mechanic to be able to go in safely and clean things. Now that the chlorine dioxide has gone through the vehicle, we can then go in and agitate with disinfectants themselves.

Disassembly

Larry: Disassembling of the car is something you do especially when you have a lot of mold in the vehicle, because mold gets behind the creases and the seams, so to do that, you have to unplug everything. Then you take it outside, or wherever you're going to work, and then disassemble the part itself. So it's multiple disassemblies. The inside of the car had absolute, just, dirt from everything you could ever imagine, everything from cookies and candy to mouse nests. In fact, we found a mouse nest that was built inside of a child's bicycle helmet. I mean, I've never seen anything like that in my entire life.

Cleaning

Larry: Once everything is removed, we actually have to scrub or agitate the dirt off. So, before that, we've sprayed it just to disinfect it, but it doesn't really remove the dirt. Once we pulled the leather out, we hit it with a -- you saw that hand tool there? We hit the back seats with that. And at the same time, you can hit the carpets with that. So it rotates, and it just spins and basically chews up all the dirt. And then you can come in and either vacuum it or use a cloth. Once all of the carpets are out, then you actually have to wipe down the metal. Doing the seats or the carpet, there's something to keep in mind. When you over soak things, it takes a lot more time to dry them out. And if you don't dry them properly, you're back in the same position, meaning you're creating mold again. In most cases, when you're doing seats, you want to introduce the least amount of water possible. In this case, we kind of have to make a little bit of an exception because there's so much mold in between everything, including the cushion, that you kind of have to clean the cushion, but we let it dry for way longer than we would normally do. So, on the door panels, they're a little bit interesting because there are electrical components in it versus something like a floor mat. So in this case, we have to be a little bit more precise. So you see us using toothbrushes and a little bit of compressed air. So, the rest of the car is actually pretty simple. First, wash the outside. We polished the outside just for goodwill; we wanted to make it look a little nicer. In this case, we cleaned out the door jams. The door jams were -- it was the crux of the entire issue. They were so jammed up in this case, they drained back into the vehicle, causing the mold. And then we had to put everything back together.

Reassembly

Larry: To reassemble a car like this, it's basically, like I said, a big jigsaw puzzle. And there's these little nuts and bolts that need to go in very specific areas, and if you're off by one little spot, it doesn't go back together, and you just fiddle with it forever. And so I would say that was probably 20% or 30% of the job, was just probably putting it back together. Learning a bunch of stuff about how to actually clean a car like this, it no longer is, quote, a "bio mold car." It's now safe enough where somebody can go into the vehicle, disassemble it, and sell it for its parts.