Not sure if this may be your problem, but it is one I had a few years ago under the same circumstances...

Moisture developed in the AC tubing that connects with the Defroster. The moisture caused mold to grow in the tube. The mold smelled and I could only smell it when air was blowing across it. I'm not saying this is your situation, but you may want to check it out. It's worth a try.

Peace,

MWG2

 

That usually doesn't happens here in Ohio with that mold problem, but what the dealer sprayed into the system should have taken care of the mold. IMO

 

Correct, any form of the defrost setting cycles on the A/C compressor.

 

My Ram had frequent bouts of this, they were notorious for it, Mopar even had an official aerosol of basically lysol they sold for it. Problem is that if you spray it in from the outside vent you often don't coat the evaporator well, and it returns quickly. I resorted to pulling the blower motor out once a year and spraying the condenser liberally with Chlorox. Gave a direct shot at it, the only way to do it. I think that in addition to the dense finning, there was no cabin filter, and the cowl cover was fairly coarsely meshed, so leaf debris would be drawn in, be shredded by the blower impeller and fill the spaces with organic matter. That'd stay damp longer then.

 

I've developed a funky, humid, moldy smell in my HHR. The smell comes through the vents at start up when the HVAC system resets itself to the vent setting. The smell is instantaneous but goes away when I change to re-circulate. I sprayed some lysol into the air inlet but that only helped the problem for a short while.

I'm going to have the dealership look into the situation later this week when I go in for an oil change.

 

Let me know what they say cuz i still have the problem.

 

I got a waft of what is probably the same smell, the other day. Persisted for about the first five minmutes of so of AC operation then faded. Car is 1 yr old and less than 10,000 miles. Kind of early in life for AC stink.

 

I thought I had seen something about a TSB on this. Moldy smell from AC and water leak. I'm trying to find it because my AC does the same thing. It stinks for a few minutes after turning on the AC, then goes away.

 

there is a tsb for it

 

OK, so don't be stingy .... SHARE! What's the number, what's covered, what do we need to know to take to the dealership?