Gas smell under WOT!
 

Ok, I've been having to drive the 7 lately cuz my probe took a turn for the worst (permanently). Will be getting my mom's 92 subary for my daily in a week or two. However, I noticed the other day when I took it out for a wide open throttle run (like from 40-120mph) that there was a strong smell of gas (I had both windows down). When I backed down and cruised along at 70-80 it quickly dissipated. I opened the hood and didn't see anything splashed around or whatnot, and didn't see any drips anywhere. Did the car just run WAYYY rich and thats why (wasn't able to burn all the fuel) the smell of gas was there?? Or am I looking more along the lines of a bad fuel line or a fuel pump or something like that? The car runs fine as far as I can tell, smooth acceleration (well as smooth as it can be for a stock turbo setup) and such.

Here's a good thread to check out about this problem
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...ight=gas+boost

I had the exact same problem, gas smell, but only under boost. First, I did the vac hose job, found a bad injector o-ring, replaced the fuel pulsation dampener, but that didn't fix the problem. Then I found out that I had a SEVERELY blown lower intake gasket. Hopefully this isn't your problem, cuz its a biatch to replace. I think rotary shops charge like $600+ to do it, because the turbos have to come off.

Are you have high idle problems too? If so, it might be a leaking intake gasket. It could also be your fuel pulsation dampener, which tend to leak on this car (and cause a lot of cars to catch on fire). Watch out!

Good luck,
Paul

Boden, be very careful you could (most likely) have a fuel leak. It's kind of a pain to check, but remove your upper intake manifold, and look under the rat's nest at your primary injectors. Make sure there is NO liquid around that area, also check your fuel pulsation dampner, it's connected to the back of the primary injector housing. Oh, and don't forget to check your surge tank. It's the black plastic tank, below the throttle body. A fuel leak is very likely to cause an engine fire so don't take this warning lightly. It would be much easier to fix a small leak than to deal with your insurance after an engine fire. Post back if you find any leaks.

eric

I had the same problem and it went away on its own.
Let me give you a little background. I live in Boston and occasionally drive the car over the winter, but not under heavy boost or high rpm due to the low traction(generally >50% throttle). Once the weather cleared and I began giving it some "stick" as they say in Top Gear it emitted the smell that you describe at high rpms.

I got the same (and very rational) advice (pulsation damper, gaskets ect) but ultimately did nothing because I was tied up with school at the time. After a couple weeks of driving it went away.

I haven't spent much time thinking about WHY it went away, but my guess is that the two or so months driving it around with the pig rich PFC under low boost and low RPM allowed a lot of "stuff" to build up in different "places," all of which was blown out when I began getting on it. The one thing that isn't consistent with this is the fact that the smell seemed to be coming the front of the car not the exhaust.

go figure.

-Chris C.

should i drive first and then check this? or would it be something noticeable if i just pulled of my manifold and checked it after the car had been sitting for a while?? and how hard is it to pull off my upper intake manifold ??

Taking the upper intake manifold off isn't that big of a deal if you move slow and keep track of everything. If you haven't replaced your vacuum lines yet it might be a good time to do that as well. I'm not sure you need to go through all this to find a fuel leak though. Below I have listed the major steps necessary to remove the upper intake manifold to give you an idea of the what you're in store for.

You can divide the project into areas (1) removing bolts (2) removing vacuum hoses (3) removing electrical connectors (all done concurrrently). Part 3 gave me the most grief because the plastic connectors are very difficult to remove thanks to heat and or age. Also its hard to see most of what you're removing because they are on the back of the manifold.

I have done it several times and here is my order(loosely)

1. remove elbow (and and hoses connected to it)
2. unbolt throttle cable and housing mounts
3. remove solenoids attacked to the front of the upper intake manifold
4. remove the black tank attached to the front of the manifold.
5. unbolt upper intake manifold
6. unbolt throttle body (to give you more movement of the upper intake manifold-not sure this is necessary, but I've always taken both off when doing it).
7. remove all vacuum lines and electrical connectors attached to the upper intake manifold (you may need to remove the throttle body to do this, again I have always done them together so I'm not sure.)
if you need to remove the throttle body you must disconnect the coolant hoses for the double throttle, be sure to plug them or else you're going to dump a lot of coolant.
if you want to replace the fuel lines you will have to remove the throttle body, plug coils and rat's nest. all of which aren't a big deal after doing the above.

That should give you a rough idea of the project. Robrobinette(sp?) has a good how to on his page for replacing the vaccum lines, most of the info applies here.


-Chris C.

Here some info from another thread I was posting about this same problem:

https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...threadid=88176

I just got all my parts in and was working on the car for a little bit. I pulled out the old PCV, and I could blow through it both ways. That's at least one problem, so I got the new PCV installed.

I'm not sure if this is going to completely fix my problem, but so far it looks promising. I'll let you know when I everything put back together.

I would suggest checking the easy things first. If you don't smell gas in the engine bay while the car is idling, it might not be an actual gas leak. Check the easy things first like the purge control system.