My garage drives in under the house and the fumes this car is putting off is asphixiating my family and I. No obvious signs of a leak...just the smell of unburned fuel. Car is a 90 vert. Any ideas? Am I missing the obvious? Thanks in Advance, Berg. Btw- the car is stinking while shut off.

 

if it is coming from under the hood, I would be checking the PD (Pulsation dampener) on the primary fuel rail.

It is not uncommon to have one fail after 10 years or 100K miles

 

Would a bad charcoal canister do it too?

 

yes mine is broke and gets a strong smell of fuel from time to time

 

Just checked fuel rail and associated parts....nothing- same with cannister. I wonder if the fumes I smelling are from when the car is started-running rich and the fumes just staying "down in the hole". My current tank of fuel may have ethanol in it also. Any further speculation?

 

Well, for one, I'd stop parking the car in the garage. Gasoline fumes have an annoying problem of igniting, and then the smell would be the least of your problems.

With the car outside, safely away from your house, turn the ignition on, and then jumper the yellow connector on the passenger's side, around the air filter. This turns the fuel pump on and will pressurize the system. Look for leaks now. Specifically, look around the injectors & pulsation damper.

If there's nothing coming from there, maybe you have a cracked return fuel line or something? Right now the goal is to find out where the smell is coming from. Raw gas smells very different from rotary exhaust - you'd know if it was just exhaust.

-=Russ=-

 

i had a hole in my gas tank made a horrible smell and unless you look under rear of car probably won't notice?

 

i had a strong fuel smell from under my hood few months ago. i would let it sit for awhile and wait till the smell went away..then i took the egi fuse out so the car would not start. i turned it over a few times so the fuel pump would come on...sure enough the smell appeard again. first thing i looked at was the PD ( that im changing ASAP anyways) ..but no its not leaking so i looks down under the Upper intake and sure enough i found this Rubber fuel hose Leaking . a 75 cent part but took 2 hours to fix since i had to take the uim off and get the old hose off. anyways the point is that there are many placing fuel can leak. and the Heat Close to the hoses shorten life of the hose. Its hard to look under it but take the time its worth it. and replace any fuel hose with the metal mesh around it. it will last alot longer

 

i actually had a fuel leak at my secondary fuel rail because 2 of my hose clamps for my fuel lines werent tightened down!!! luckily i spotted the problem before it was a major catastrophe.

yeah do what that one guy said. jumper that connector so that the fuel pump is running, THEN is when you'll find the leaks..