Lately I've been getting a fuel smell sometimes. It comes when I start my car after it's been sitting a while and lasts about 5 minutes before completely disappearing. Sometimes it doesn't come at all. I can only smell it with the blower vents on, so I checked under the hood on the passenger's side. It smelled the same as it did inside the car near the carbon filter, and near the pulsation dampener. Then when I moved to the drivers side the smell got a heck of a lot stronger. I removed the power steering fluid cap to sniff in there and the smell was unchanged.

My PD was changed last year. I put a paper towel under the PD's plastic cap and it came out dry. So I put the power towel back and ran the engine for a while. Still dry. I changed my fuel filter a year ago, and the smell hasn't come until recently. All my fluid levels are steady, and I haven't seen a noticeable drop in gas mileage nor a noticeable increase in oil consumption. The smell seemed to come a bit after I changed my coolant. The engine block coolant plug is near where the smell is coming from. Dunno if that's related.

Any ideas? If everyone is stumped I'll just take it to a mechanic, but I'm hoping it'll be something simple.

 

Thats kind of where the fuel lines come in at. Just have to check all the lines.

 

Hmmm, thx. It's actually right about time to have all my hoses/lines/etc. inspected, so I'll just take it to a shop and have them take care of the fuel line (or whatever it turns out to be) while they inspect everything else.

Ya, I could examine all my lines (not just fuel) myself, and I'd do a thorough job, but with the way I do thorough it'd take forever. Dang... now I'm 1 out of 3 on asking a question and DIYing it. In my defense I still do all my own non-inspection maintenance (i.e., the 3,000 to 60,000 mile stuff).

In the meantime - assuming the leak is on the driver's side - it's not gonna catch fire or anything, is it?

 

I am having the same symptoms , let me know what you find out

 

Is your car still pretty much stock eric?

 

IMMMEDIATELY BUY A FIRE EXTINGUISHER

Alot of people have been losing cars to fires lately it seems.

Go pick up 10FT of SAE 30R9 fuel hose in 5/16" and a bunch of fuel injection hose clamps, replace all the hoses and clamps and tell us if it stillsmells, another thing to check would be injector o-rings and grommets, if they werent changed with the PD.

this happened to my car and it was a torn fuel hose.