MTFCA Forum

Every time the T stops at a lite there is a horrible odor coming (I think) from the engine compartment. Can't smell it as I go down the road but I'm sure it is still there.

Any guesses as to what it might be??

The skunk under the hood?

You didn't say if the car had the stink before you went out for a drive. So perhaps something is stuck on the tail pipe and the heat from it is burning something (rag, grease from the ball cap, rodent or cat....)

It could be your brakes. Especially if you have auxiliary brakes and you have a leak around one of the rear wheels which puts rear axle lube on the lining. When you apply the brake it burns. Or it could be blow by from the engine which is carried away by the wind while the car is moving bur comes up through the floorboards when you are stopped. Does this happen if you start the engine and let it run before you drive and then stop? After you stop and are idling does it keep on stinking?
Norm

You have a friend that put some Limberger cheese on your engine. Old Wisconsin trick.

One mans stink is another mans perfume...what kind of smell is it? Rotting meat , burning oil, or cheap aftershave?

One thing I forget to mention. If he ran over a skunk, it would stink, however it would continue to stink while driving or when stopped.
Norm

Did you have a passenger (person, cat, dog)?

Do you have a muffler? Check every orifice in the engine compartment and under cab that a mouse could fit into. Mice are pretty small and one could have crawled in someplace and died. Jim Patrick

It would be hard to imagine a more nebulous complaint, yet the good guys are willing to offer solutions. A time or two I've been told my car stinks, but the remark had nothing to do with odor.

Running on OLD gas can cause this. I am currently driving one of my cars daily to lower the fuel enough to put fresh stuff in. It was parked with a full tank.

In the early 1300's a fellow named William of Occam postulated that the simple answer tends to be the correct answer to a problem. This is now called Occam's Razor:

Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, Ocham's razor (Latin: novacula Occami) or law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae) is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity." The idea is attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), a scholastic philosopher and theologian who used a preference for simplicity to defend the idea of divine miracles. It is variously paraphrased by statements like "the simplest explanation is most likely the right one". This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions, and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions.

So, if it stinks there's undoubtedly something dead somewhere in the car.

Henry, Bill Oxham would probably first ask, "What does it stink of ?" John never said what it smelled like.

jiminbartow wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 27, 2020 7:33 pm

Do you have a muffler? Check every orifice in the engine compartment and under cab that a mouse could fit into. Mice are pretty small and one could have crawled in someplace and died. Jim Patrick

Thinking maybe the exhaust pack nut might be loose.

I can think of 2 - one is a dead varmint that is stuck inside the frame rails, probably where the transmission support is... The other is that feral tomcat (or skunk or raccoon) that peed all over your motor. Nothing stinks worse than stale fuming cat pee. Don't ask how I know abut that one...

I know that smell, didn't even have to feral cat, it was mine and he peed on the kitchen stove burner!! OMG the stink. Mice in the stove insulation.