My 2005 RX330 has a water leak problem at the point where the rear hatch hydraulics bolt to the car’s frame. Apparently, after years of raising & lowering the rear hatch (either by hand or with power motor) the bolt holes wear larger & loose, enough to allow rainwater to drain down into the rear deck metal frame below all coverings & mats, and roll down to settle under the rear seat floor carpeting, eventually causing the carpet padding to rot & mold. At least, that’s what the body shop guy told me. He fixed it with weld around the holes and new hydraulics, plus new rear carpeting, cost a bundle, but now the water & mold has returned to the rear floor under the carpets.
Before I take out the rear seats and lift up the carpet (myself this time, I’m not paying another $1,000 bucks to have someone else do it) I wondered if there was some kind of spray mold-killer that will actually kill the mold & smell if I just lift the carpet from the side (w/rear seats still in place) enough to spray a bunch of it under the carpet?
Anyone else had similar problem, found a simpler solution than ripping the whole rear seating & carpeting apart? Thanks

 

Bleach, maybe look into ozone machines. Be careful, mold and many things that remove it are hazardous.

 

If you have mold under the carpet, my recommendation is to take the carpet out of the car. Leaving it in the car will require a longer drying out time. By taking the carpet out, you can spray bleach (or whatever) and let it dry in the sun. Then hose the carpet down (or wash it with soap and water if it needs it) to remove the remnants of the contaminants and let it dry in the sun. Be careful using bleach and don't soak the carpet as it might soak through and bleach out the color.

 

Thanks guys. I did run a high-quality ozone machine under the carpet for 2 days. I thought it would work, but nada.

And as per Dennis, it sounds like there’s no way to get rid of mold/smell without pulling out seats and carpeting. Complete with removal of console and kick-panel strips, this is a huge hassle, so I was trying to avoid this, But so far, it doesn’t sound like there’s a way to do that.

 

DennisMik is right, you should remove all the carpets. Wash them by hand thoroughly and let them dry out; in the sun if possible. Treat all areas with Lysol. Get the anti microbial Lysol that says it kills 99.9% of germs on the can. Not the air freshener stuff. The strong Lysol is hospital grade disinfectant and anti microbial. Good luck.

 

More importantly if you have not found the source of the leak – water getting into the cabin, none of the things you are working on in terms of getting the mold and the smell out of your RX.

Highly suggest you get the root cause of water getting into the cabin addressed successfully. Did you get a warranty on the body work done to address this water leak issue?

Good luck!

 

+1 on this. I would take the carpet out completely and drive it that way until I found the source of the leak. I had a body seam in another unibody car that had developed a fatigue failure in the factory caulk in the most inacessible place you can imagine...and I'm used to working by flashlight, upside-down in aircraft engine pylons searching for hydraulic leaks. I would never have found it with carpet in the car.

When I was a kid, I would replace all the dingy carpet in any car I bought with a kit from JC Whitney. It was nylon-loop carpet back then, and the carpet kits were molded correctly and fit great. It was a few hundred bucks. Don't know if that's still an option. But its almost impossible to de-funk carpet. Only time will do that, in my experience. It seems to run out of stink molecules after a few months/years of being dry.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys. After many weeks of waiting for the weather to turn dry here, I finally broke down today and started removing the old carpet for drying out and de-molding.
I completely removed the 2 piece back seat of the RX330. The problem is, the carpet is one large long piece that starts behind the back seats and runs all the way up to the fire wall, under the front bucket seats and console too, as well as surrounding the gear box. Aughhh! So I basically have to remove ALL seats, center console and more to actually lift the whole carpet out of the car frame. The front seats have a similar bolt-down to the floor, no big figure-out, but both front seats have motorized controls for movement, which will have to be properly disconnected/reconnected.
Basically turning into a massive job

 

It is a very big job and I wish you the best of luck with it. I see you live in CA. I live in Long Beach, and the weather around here has been less than optimal for carpet drying at least in the mornings (June gloom). Hopefully its strong, full sun where you are..

While you have it out, maybe think about running some amplifier power cable and RCA lines under the carpet with the thought of future stereo improvements in mind? Now would certainly be the time to do it.

 

I got lucky. All the wetness and moldy smell was concentrated in the foam padding of the carpet at the rear seat foot wells. It hadn't progressed further forward to the carpeting under the front seats or foot areas. With only the rear seats and console removed, I found a way to lift & suspend the carpeting over the front seats, totally exposing the grey padding that had gotten wet/moldy, and was able to dry out (with towels, sun and hours of a blow dryer set to 'high') and treat just those spots - without removing the front seats/whole carpet up to fire wall. Saved lot of time & hassle and the smell/mold is totally gone.

 

Glad to hear that you were able to avoid removing the front seats and everything. Every car that I had to remove carpet on used 2 pieces, one for the front and one for the rear with overlap under the front seats.

Your mechanic was right about the source of the leak but maybe off by an inch or so. Lexus issued a service bulletin back in 2009 about this. There is a weld just above the bracket for the strut that cracks. Here is the bulletin: