Foul a/c odor at startup

[militarydave]

recently, my 99 CE emits a foul odor when i warm the car up and turn on the vent or a/c. the odor goes away after the a/c starts cooling, but the first minute or so smells like pure... well... garbage.

I'm tired of seeing my passengers faces when i blow the a/c and have to tell them its not me - its the car - and my year model does NOT have a cabin air filter.

someone told me there may be mold in the a/c lines and that theres some sort of R134a canned airfreshener (frigi-fresh i think) that you pour into the low pressure port of the a/c line and it will smell like flowers or pina colada or whatever for a week then the odor goes away completely, eliminating the foul smell(s).

has anyone tried this? i'm sure toyota will charge quite a bit for like a $12 can of air freshened freon, plus labor.

just curious to see if anyone has had this problem and who i can go about smelling fresh and clean!

[pdq]

The refrigerant is isolated from the air, so changing refrigerant will not affect anything. BTW, there's no such thing as refrigerant with fragrance.

Assuming you don't get a smell if you just have heat on, you likely have mildew/mold on your condenser coils. The only recommendation I've heard is to put the system into outside air mode, full power on the blowers, and then slowly spray a can of Lysol into the louvers where the windshield wipers are. You can also put it on recirculate mode and spray the intake duct under the passenger seat. Then run the system for at least 10 more minutes.

You should also check if your condensate vent tube is clogged. Do you get drips of water on the ground near the passenger wheel after running the AC for a few minutes and then turning the car off? The tube if I recall is a black hose near the passenger side of the firewall near the ground that can be seen with the hood open.

[militarydave]

I ended up buying some duct cleaner (which is like aerosol lysol for the duct vents). I was pretty sure that the regfrigerant is an entirely enclosed system, which would not allow any odors in - unless it had a leak, but it would leak regfrigerant outwards.

I checked all induction vents/hoses/cowls and they appear to be ok. the cleaner did help quite a bit. thanks for your input pdq - i suspected the same thing!

[01loadedLE]

I've used the odor killers several times. Just know it's only a temporary fix. The odor will be back within a couple months.