Jaguar XF AC smells like a wet towel, should I clean it or fix it?
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Maybe this is a silly thing to ask, but I would rather ask than guess. I have a 2014 Jaguar XF that I bought from a friend who was moving back home, and the car has been very good to me so far. The only thing that bothers me is the AC. Every morning when I switch it on, a damp smell comes out for about thirty seconds, like a wet towel left in a bag. After that it goes away and the air gets cold, but the smell comes back after the car sits in the sun for a few hours. My sister refuses to sit in the front now, which is funny but also a little embarrassing. I tried changing the cabin filter myself using a video, and it helped for two days only. Then I read that the smell can come from water sitting inside the box behind the dashboard, and that a blocked drain pipe can make it worse. I had never thought about water collecting inside a car AC. I spent one evening reading about how it all works and opened a page about Jaguar cars on a Sharjah website, mostly to learn why these cars have some problems that other brands do not. It explained how moisture and the cooling parts work together, and I finally understood why a smell can show up even when the air is cold. A guy from my gym said I should look into Jaguar AC maintenance in Sharjah before the smell turns into a bigger repair, because he saw a coworker ignore the same thing until a part failed. I am not sure if that is true or if he just likes giving advice. So here are my questions. Is a smell like this only a cleaning job, or can it mean something is already wrong inside? How often should a Jaguar AC be cleaned or checked, once a year or only when there is a problem? Is it worth asking for the drain pipe to be checked at the same time? And is it normal for the AC to take a bit longer to cool after the car has been parked outside all day? If you fixed this on your Jaguar, please tell me what worked and roughly how much it cost. Thanks in advance.