Spilled milk might cost me real money for Tiffany!
I don't know why they'd ever say "Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk". Seriously. Milk is not the easiest thing to clean up. And if you don't clean it up right, you are SCREWED!
Here's what happened. Mom sets up our groceries. She's always done our grocery shopping and it was really hard on her when she finally admitted that she couldn't physically make the trip to the store any longer to do the weekly and monthly grocery shopping. No mater how many times she found a bench and sat down, she just couldn't do it. Thankfully during the COVID times, it became normal in these parts for stores to offer pick up. Using their app, you fill out what you want, buy it, and then set up a time to go pick it up. It's been standard fare for us for over a year now that Mom sets up her grocery shopping for me to pick up on Saturdays (we moved it to Fridays while I'm not working). There are a couple stores in town that do this, but we generally stick with one until they piss us off. There's also Sam's Club where we do monthly shopping.
Anyway, last Friday I went to pick up the grocery shopping. I had a migraine but the we set the pick up time for as early as possible so the migraine isn't as bad as it will be later in the day. Well, last week was pretty bad. Not pain wise, but brain fog wise. I screwed up in the app (put the wrong parking space), I backed into the drive way wrong, I locked the door when I meant to unlock it... I was just not myself. The last thing for me to take out of the car was the gallon of milk mom got. One gallon was fine as R was heading up north for the week with the nephews. If he were staying, I'd have mentioned that we only got one gallon of milk, knowing that mom would have ordered more.
Quick aside; I've been having a moisture problem with Tiffany. In the mornings there is so much condensation on the inside of her windshield that I have to mop it away with a towel. It takes almost twenty minutes of driving with the windows down and the Air Con set to defrost to clear the rest of the windshield. When it was cold enough, it would actually freeze over and it would take Tiffany upwards of a half hour to unfreeze the inside of the windshield. I probably would have dealt with this more aggressively but I just don't drive that often. Generally just to go pick up the weekly and/or monthly grocery shopping.
So, I did the grocery shopping last Friday (8/9/2024). On Wednesday I had to do some running around. I had an appointment with my endocrinologist, had to stop by the smoke shop for cigarettes, and finally go to the local pharmacy to pick up my upgraded Namenda prescription. When I got into Tiffany not only did she have the condensation, it seemed worse than normal and actually smelled a little bad. With R gone up north for the week, I parked Tiffany in his spot when I got back. That made Tiffany face east instead of west. I doubted it would do anything, but I wanted to see if getting the morning sun on her windshield would at least reduce the condensation.
This Friday (8/16/2024) rolls around and it's grocery shopping time again. I could see through the bathroom window that Tiffany's windshield was fogged over. Bad. Realizing that facing her East didn't make it any better, I did some online research on what excessive condensation could be. I found out that Lincoln Nautiluses are not particularly known for this problem, so I was extrapolating a lot of other posts about other cars with the same problem. The consensus seems to be that it's one of three things. 1) There's a bad seal. One of the windows or the sunroof isn't keeping the air out. 2) The air recirculating fan door has broken and is stuck in the 'closed' position, leaving just inner air blowing around. And 3) Some of the AC drain lines got plugged and it's leaking into the interior, soaking the carpets.
I didn't like any of these options. Tiffany is a Lincoln and we can joke about her status as a 'luxury' car all we want, but she's whisper quiet. She not only has sound deadening material everywhere, her glass is double paned and is sealed excellently. She is so quiet that when I was stuck in the Chicago traffic recently, stuck behind and between semi trucks, I barely heard them at all. It'd be hard to have a seal leaking enough moisture, yet still keeping the interior sound proof. If I left the windows closed, the air circulating door might make sense. I mean, I breathe inside the car and that introduced a lot of humidity, and that humidity fogs the windows at night when it cools down. But I'm a smoker. I open the drivers side window a LOT. About half the time I'm driving Plus, even when I'm not smoking, I tend to drive with the window open so that I get fresh air in. I don't like the smell of old smoke mixing in with my leather. And finally I think I would have noticed if the drain was plugged. I don't recall the floors ever being squishy, and this happened in the winter too when I wasn't using the AC or defrost all that much.
Anyway, it said one thing to do before taking it into a shop or the dealership was to check out the carpets. From the drivers footwell, the back seat on both sides, the trunk (the back since Tiffany is a SUV), and the passenger's footwell. If any area is even moist, it's something to let the service center or mechanic know.
When I headed out to go grocery shopping I planned to walk around and open all of Tiffany's doors, one by one, and check the carpets. As soon as I opened the driver's door, I got a whiff of something BAD. I mean.... something might have died in my car BAD. I felt the carpet, wanting to get this part over before I checked out the smell and the drivers footwell was dry. Moving to the drivers side back seat door, the stench was more potent. I mean, it knocked me back. It was awful. I was suddenly concerned that some animal had gotten into the car and died in there. When I felt the carpet it was wet. And sticky. Ewwww.....
As I went to shut the door I got the first sign that this might be bad. There were spots on the seatbelt:
To quote Cleveland from Family Guy "That's Nasty!"
At this point I was afraid that something had died in Tiffany and because it was so moist, bacteria had gotten all over the place and was growing like a petri dish. It didn't make sense but... whatever, that's where my mind was at.
Moving to the back, I swung my foot under the bumper to open the hatch and OH MY GOD the wall of stink that came out and smacked me in the face was terrible. That's when I saw it.
The gallon milk container. I'd say the gallon of milk, but the container was all but empty, the bottom just having a layer of white over a dark blue/purple creamy looking thing.
I immediately knew what had happened. Mom had ordered two gallons of milk the week before, but I only got one out of the car. It had been sitting there for just a few hours shy of a full week. In the August heat. That odor I noticed on Wednesday was likely the milk container being full of soured rotten milk and pressing out at its seams, letting out that little bit of stink but not enough to even smell like rotten milk. Then with me jostling it around while driving around, I burst the gallon. Either that, or it just continued to get worse and burst itself soon thereafter. But it spread out on Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday morning. It covered the entire back area of Tiffany (the trunk?). It soaked up the sides of the back area as they're covered with carpet. It got into the back seats. It soaked the carpet at the back seats so bad that it actually soaked up into the carpeted floor mats. It got so bad that that moisture climbed up the seatbelt and let the bacteria grow there too.
I don't have a photo of the offending gallon of milk. I grabbed it out with a finger and thumb and gingerly walked it over to the garbage can. But here are some photos of what I saw.
I wanted you to see this one before the two close up shots I got. There was a three space cargo holder in the center, right up against the seats (you can see the outline of where it sat in the carpet). The milk was to the left of that. I know that doesn't look like much, but understand the carpet was soaked. I felt three places, and it was squishy in all three. That's actually a Lincoln carpet mat. There's the carpeted 'floor' beneath that. The carpeted floor was also soaked and squishy. Below the floor is the spare tire, and IT has milk marks on it. It soaked through ALL of those layers.
This is the first closeup shot. I circled in red the areas where you can see the bacterial growth. Understand, the white you are seeing is NOT milk. The milk has soaked in and is being broken down by the bacteria. The white areas are colonies. This is on the right hand side of the rear area, so all the way across from where the milk container was. Even that far away, it soaked up into the carpeted mat and has colony growth there. It soaked up into the carpet on the back seats and has colony growth there. It soaked up into the carpeted area on the side of the rear area (the two big white areas) which is NOT easily removable. The troubling part, in my opinion, is the circled area on the side and above the carpeted area. That's a bacterial colony forming on the plastic. That and the circled area on the speaker grill. How far did it get into the speaker?
This is looking down into the footwell of the passenger side rear seat. Imagine, the milk container was behind the back seats. So for it to get up here it had to soak the carpet it was on, seep behind the back seats likely soaking INTO the back seats, and finally onto the carpet. That carpet is one piece that stretches from the back seat footwell to the drivers and passengers footwells. And you can see in the circled areas, its not just forming colonys on the carpet, it was so bad that it soaked up into the carpeted mats and is forming colonies there too.
Finally, this is just inside the rear door on the drivers side (looking down at the rear of the back seat and the plastic molding around the door). I wanted to show this as there was no easy way for the milk nastiness to get soaked up here. There's no carpet. But you can see the circled areas that there are colonies growing. And yes, that's the offending seat belt from the first photo.
If the milk got up onto those parts.... why wouldn't we assume it got to the front seats? Why wouldn't we assume it got into the sound deadening material inside the body panels and doors? The spare tire. The amp that sits in the rear near that speaker? Hell.... why wouldn't we assume it got up front and into the dashboard?
Because let me tell you, the smell that its giving off is beyond terrible. I'm gagging a little just thinking about it as I write this up.
Anyway, I felt the carpets. Wet and sticky and moist in both rear footwells (on the floor mats) and both carpeted layers of the rear floor. I didn't climb in enough to feel the backs of the rear seats, but they looked moist. And while I didn't take a photo, the spare tire had some of those white colony areas on it.
Obviously, I didn't drive Tiffany to get the groceries. I took Mom's Escape and picked them up in that. When I got back home I moved Tiffany back into her parking spot as I didn't want R to have to deal with it when he got back. All that involved was backing out of the spot she was in and into the street. Pulling forward enough into the street so that I can then back into the driveway (basically turning her around from the direction she was facing) and then back into her spot next to the garage. The entire maneuver from opening the door, reaching in to hit the 'start' button, rolling the front windows down, getting in and moving Tiffany, rolling the windows up, and finally getting out, took all of 45 seconds.
I thought I was going to die.
I have a fairly strong stomach, but that smell had me gagging.
I did some research on how to clean up spoiled milk and my research immediately started scaring the hell out of me. Most of the episodes I read about talked about spilling a 'pint' or 'quart' of milk and most talked about it being found three or four days later. Only one mentioned that it was in the summer. I spilled a gallon, let it sit for a week, and it was on seven consecutive days over 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
They mentioned using a combination of vinegar and water, although they had conflicting information on what ratio to mix it at. They suggested using coffee grounds and oranges for the smell. They suggested using protein and enzyme cleaners that will break down the milk proteins and let the bacteria starve. And almost all of them, with less milk and less time and less temperature than what I'm dealing with, talked about ultimately having to replace the carpet in the car. Some even talked about having to replace more than the carpet.
I immediately knew this was a job outside of what I could expect to do myself. I was betting it was beyond getting it to a car detailer to clean up. And then mom told me about how dad had spilled a gallon of milk in the back of one of our station wagons. This was well over 30 years ago, but they couldn't get it cleaned up and the smell persisted, so they put in an insurance claim and got most of the carpet in the car replaced.
So, I put in an insurance claim on my spilled milk yesterday afternoon. This morning I got a call from a local body shop who is going to be taking care of it. They know what they're getting into as he knew immediately that I wasn't going to be able to drive it to their location and arranged for a tow truck to pick it up. He said he'd look at it and get back to me early next week 'with a plan'.
As an example of how bad the smell is, I greeted the tow truck driver and told him what was going on. Tiffany, being an all wheel drive vehicle, needs to be towed on a flatbed so they can't just hook the front tires and lift her up by them. They need to either drive her up onto the flat bed or at the least, have her in neutral and pull her up on it via a chain. As I handed the key off to the young driver (probably in his 20s) and told him that it was bad and he should spend as little time in the car as possible he gave me that look that only 20 some odd year olds can give. That "Yeah yeah, you don't know what you're talking about man" look. I stepped inside and pulled up the camera feed so I could watch him work. He got the truck in place and moved in to Tiffany to shift her into neutral. He got out of Tiffany rather quickly. Once he had her loaded up and had to get back in to Tiffany in order to put her back into park and set the brake, he prepared by pulling his shirt and sweatshirt up over his nose. He was in Tiffany for all of 5 seconds before jumping out and bending over, hands on knees, as he nearly retched in my driveway.
Yeah, it smells THAT bad.
Anyway she's off at the body shop. If they have to get into replacing things, there IS a chance that she could get totaled out. My friend A and his wife J both worked for several insurance companies and have extensive experience with stuff like this. When a bill is approaching to value of a car, they start looking at likely hood of overruns. Hey, it costs this much to replace the carpet, the rear seats, and the rear speaker assembly and we think that will fix it. But what would it cost if they needed to go a step further and replace the sound deadening material, and the carpet in the front? Or the front seats (with the built in DVD players and screens)? So when they get an estimate from a contractor, they generally will target 80% of the cars value. If they get to that number, and can't say with near certainty that it will be repaired at or below that number, they'll write it off as 'totaled' and pay the current market value.
The current market value of Tiffany, per Kelly Blue Book is $25,000. I figure it'd be a little less than that, so I worked with a valuation of $22,000. That means they'd only have to approach $17,000 in order to consider totaling out Tiffany. Because of spilled milk.
On the surface it sounds crazy, but just think about it. How much does the carpet in a car cost? How about the seats (if it's in the seat cushions, there's no amount of scrubbing that will get rid of it)? What about the panels on the side (the carpeted parts at least, as they'd probably be able to clean the plastic pieces). What about if it got into the sound deadening material? A couple thousand here, a couple thousand there... it starts to add up quickly. Just looking at the official Ford Parts website, the center armrest for the back seat? It costs $577. The trunk mat floor? $807. The seat cover and seat cushion for the BOTTOM of the rear seat? $1,200.
Like I said, it starts to add up quickly as those are just parts. There's going to be labor involved of taking the stuff out and cleaning the parts that don't need to be replaced. I don't think it will be totaled out, but I'm not confident enough to say it won't be totaled out either. Let's just say I'm mentally getting ready to replace Tiffany.
Speaking of replacing her. Let's say I get $22,000 from my insurance company. I can also pull the extra cash I have from when I pulled my 401k. $14,000. That gives me $36,000 out the door pricing on a replacement vehicle.
Ideally, I'd want a 2021 Lincoln Nautilus. The 2021 gives me the bigger screen up front. But when I looked at those in a reasonable distance away, I only came up with a few and they were all over $40,000. My heart whispered to me, reminding me that I could pull more money out of my 401k but then my brain bitch slapped my heart and told it to shut the fuck up.
That's as far as I looked. I'm fairly sure I could replace Tiffany with something equivalent for about that amount of money. It might not be with the big screen, but I won't leave any features back either, like Adaptive Cruise, the bigger engine, AWD, bigger wheels, Sunroof, the enhanced audio system, and heated steering wheel. If I stay with the milage on Tiffany, 57,000 miles, and stay on a 2019 or 2020 (i.e. not a bigger screen) I might even be able to get the Black Label trim which is a fancy interior.
And then there's the more pragmatic approach. I could get a Ford Edge. I'm sure I could get a very nice one without even having to use my own money. As of 2021 they have big screens too. They just don't have all the bells and whistles and cache of a Lincoln. Then again, I'd be looking at this as a get around car until I'm working again and then it's just a trade in value. I trade it in and get an all electric Cadillac or a brand new Nautilus hybrid.
Regardless, I'm in a holding pattern. I'll either update with a comment to this post, or a new post when I hear more.
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