02/17/2026
Long post alert! But this one’s worth it.
I received a call about this 2022 Mustang Mach-E on Friday, January 2nd.
The owner explained there had been an “incident” in the back seat involving a dog and some stomach bile. He cleaned up what he could but wanted it professionally handled to eliminate the odor and properly sanitize the interior.
To both of us, it sounded pretty straightforward. Interior detail. Light bio clean up. Ozone treatment. Done.
He dropped it off that weekend. We scheduled it for Monday.
Well… we were both wrong.
After the initial cleaning, I removed the rear seat and found that the bile had completely saturated the foam padding inside the seat cushion. And even if I could accurately describe the smell, I won’t. None of you deserve that mental description😅
I called the customer and explained the situation. He decided to order a brand new seat cushion and cover so we wouldn’t be chasing odor down the road.
Problem solved, right?
Nope.
The next morning I came into the shop, opened the car doors… and the smell was stronger.
That’s when we found the real issue.
The bile hadn’t just soaked into the seat pad. It had leaked down into the floor and saturated the backside of the carpet. From the top, the carpet looked perfectly clean and dry. If we hadn’t pulled the seat and stirred up the stomach bile, we never would have caught it.
Multiple rounds of enzyme treatment. Hot water extraction. Air drying. More enzyme. More extraction. The smell was reduced… but still there.
At that point, the only true fix was carpet replacement. I suggested the customer contact his insurance company to see if it would be covered. We worked with his insurance company from start to finish to make sure it was completely covered, if you've had to make claims before, you know it can be a drawn out process. Well, after about a week of back and forth, it was approved and the new carpet was ordered.
Six weeks after it was dropped off, the Mach-E finally left the shop.
If you stopped in during that time, you probably heard the story about “the dog bile car.”
This was easily one of the most challenging jobs we’ve taken on, and honestly… one of my favorites.
It felt more like an investigation than a detail. Tracking down the source, solving the problem layer by layer, making sure it was actually fixed and not just temporarily masked. In the end we gained a new friend and a lifelong customer because we kept the customer updated, we communicated every step of the way and we resolved a very difficult problem for the customer and his family.
We will miss the Mach E, it was a staple here at the shop for those 6 weeks, but we are extremely happy that the customer has it back and can enjoy it again!
