I have been suffering from severe cases of stinky washer bottle syndrome for a while (on both our cars) and I finally got round to trying out a fix on one of the affected cars today - very pleased with the outcome.
The root cause is foul-stenching bacteria which grows inside the washer bottle. The fix is to pop in two Milton sterilising tablets (normally used for baby bottles and such) into the full bottle... let that work for 30 mins (after pumping a bit through to front and rear jets)... then pump it all out with washer jets and refill the bottle with a decent screen wash mix.
I say 'decent' screen wash mix as this problem only started when I switched to buying screen wash from Halfrauds out of pure convenience - whatever is (or is not) in that caused that god-awful stink in both cars... it grew over time and never disappeared until today.
I have now switched to Quantum screen-wash and hope that the stink never returns.
I found this fix on another random car forum which also pointed at Halfrauds screen wash as being the villain of the piece - I am not claiming any new invention here. There is also a theory that mineral build up caused by Halfraud's product causes the rear washer jet on C5/B6 etc to corrode and cause premature failure... I had to replace the C5 rear wiper motor for exactly that reason recently so maybe thats just co-incidence. I will swap the B6 over to Quantum asap so its rear wiper doesn't befall the same fate.
The tablets are super cheap (packs of 24 iirc) and available on-line or any pharmacist.
Thought it worth sharing as it took me a while to track down a solution to this !
The root cause is foul-stenching bacteria which grows inside the washer bottle. The fix is to pop in two Milton sterilising tablets (normally used for baby bottles and such) into the full bottle... let that work for 30 mins (after pumping a bit through to front and rear jets)... then pump it all out with washer jets and refill the bottle with a decent screen wash mix.
I say 'decent' screen wash mix as this problem only started when I switched to buying screen wash from Halfrauds out of pure convenience - whatever is (or is not) in that caused that god-awful stink in both cars... it grew over time and never disappeared until today.
I have now switched to Quantum screen-wash and hope that the stink never returns.
I found this fix on another random car forum which also pointed at Halfrauds screen wash as being the villain of the piece - I am not claiming any new invention here. There is also a theory that mineral build up caused by Halfraud's product causes the rear washer jet on C5/B6 etc to corrode and cause premature failure... I had to replace the C5 rear wiper motor for exactly that reason recently so maybe thats just co-incidence. I will swap the B6 over to Quantum asap so its rear wiper doesn't befall the same fate.
The tablets are super cheap (packs of 24 iirc) and available on-line or any pharmacist.
Thought it worth sharing as it took me a while to track down a solution to this !
Comment