oldusedbear wrote:

You've got lots of ideas here. Some are pretty good.

A clarification (explanation) on ozone. Contrary to some opinion, ozone does NOT cover up odors. It DOES destroy them - - but still has limitations. Most oxygen, just sitting around doing its thing, is in the form of 0-2 (can't type exponents or "sub-ponents" on this keyboard). Think of those two atoms of oxygen just hanging out holding hands - - sorta friendly like. Ozone however, is what you get if there are THREE atoms of oxygen instead of the usual two. Turns out that like most triangles, the third one may be sort of loose and flighty - - chemists call this "active." That means that the extra atom is more than anxious to take off and go get tied up somewhere else. That's what ozone does - - the extra oxygen atom zips around looking for some other atoms (maybe smells, or maybe even your tires) to glom onto and OXIDIZE.

So how about smells - - All of them, including the bad ones are the gaseous vapors coming off of SOMETHING. Could be smoke, something spilled, something dead - - whatever. Sometimes they come from something very volatile, and will disappear on their own with time and some temperature. Rubbing alcohol could be a good example. Evaporates rapidly and the smell goes away. An opposite example could be 90 weight gear oil - - stinks pretty badly, and takes forever to evaporate.

If you put a pan with some gear oil in a small room, it would smell it up considerably. An ozone generator, would chomp up the smell in a hurry, but it would come right back as soon as you removed the generator. You have to get rid of the pan with the standing oil to cure the problem.

Smoke, tobacco tars and such, are also stinky and are made up of heavy molecules. They soak into fabrics, wood, and other porous materials. Takes a long time to reverse that process. Heat can speed up getting those smells back out of whatever they have soaked into, and once out, they can be "eaten up" by ozone. But this process (chemists call it "outgassing")can be pretty slow.

So the best approach is actually a combination of things (assuming you ARE going to try to clean up the smell - - as opposed to buying a coach that doesn't have the problem). First, you would clean and scrub out the source of the smell as much as possible. Painting, and replacement are options too. In short, do everything you can to REMOVE THE SOURCE. Then, if you follow up with a commercial grade ozone generator - - not the puny little home ionizers you get on the shopping channel, you will see results. A real one generally will cost 500 bucks or more - - probably best to rent one. It will produce high (dangerous to health) levels of ozone in a hurry. You do NOT want a lot of exposure to these high levels - - eyes, nose, lungs are easily damaged.

So - - Yes, ozone works. But, it takes a lot of time and additional effort as well. You can make lots of improvement over what you are starting with, but it may still not satisfy you, and as others have said, it IS a buyer's market out there.