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Key areas of concern are:
- Headliner and pillars (foam underneath headliner)
- Carpet (foam underneath)
- Ventilation including the vent passages, evaporator, blower fan.
- Door panels (behind them)
Headliner foam and carpet foam soak up the nicotine/tar and thats where the issues lies.
All other hard surfaces such as vents passages, evaporator , seats and dash can be cleaned easily and are not necessarily a problem once surface is cleaned.
If your budget allows, best course of action would be to replace the whole headliner including the pillars, with new or used non smoker liner.
When it comes to carpet keep in mind nicotine and tar are embedded not only on top of the carpet surface but rather in the foam underneath it.
To do this right you're going to have to remove the seats completely, front and rear, and have someone with a professional strength extractor try and tackle this.
This is not a one time spray and extract. It needs to be repeated a few times on the carpets, to allow the cleaning agent to really penetrate into the foam.
This is why you can't do this on the headliner as it will begin to sag as glue/foam is saturated.
Another thing that i didn't see anyone mention (or maybe i missed it) is door panels.
You must remove the door panels and clean behind them. I discussed this way back with a professional detailer and he mentioned that a lot of smell comes from there as well.
Door cards must be cleaned from the back side and so does the vapor barrier and metal surface of the door.
Definitely not a one day job, but over time you will be able to eliminate 95% of the smell. Good luck and keep up posted of the progress.
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