2013 Elantra GT ... It is winter on the east coast and we turned on the heater and the car began to smell like an electric wire is burning. It literally is making us sick. The A/C did not produce this smell. The dealer says it is normal.
View 9 RepliesAfter battling the general nitwit public earlier. I was on my way home and as I neared my house, a party bus was blocking the road. Well, I got angry, shifted to reverse, revved the engine while letting out the clutch to back up and take a different route. Then this horrible burning electric/plastic smell inundated the inside of my R. I knew I rode that clutch while backing up. My question is did I do noticeable damage my clutch, or is it one of those: it'll be fine just don't do it again thing?
View 4 RepliesA 2000 Passat with the 6 cylinder and automatic transmission. 95,000 miles has a burning smell...especially with the heater on...Changed the oil about two weeks agao ...and now with the heater on the car smells like its burning... You can see smoke coming off the rear of the motor when the engine cover is pulled off. .
Could it be a head gasket?
Could it be a rear seal?
Could it be a valve cover gasket?
Could it be the tranny leaking?
Anything typical of these V6's that might give possible insight? Local car mechanic was looking at the car and said "take it to the dealer" ....
'01 Dodge Caravan smells like something is burned or burning when the heater is on. Both heater motors run fine on all speeds, no noises, but doesn't seem to be heating like it should.
View 6 RepliesOver the past 6 years, searching for this problem--burning rubber smell coming from the heater in y 2003 Baja. Not so bad if the re-circulation is on, not so bad outside the car, can be smelled beneath the hood, but unbearable inside. It isn't plastic, oil, fluid, gaskets, wiring, it's rubber, like burning tires. Was barely noticeable when I bought the car 6 years ago, making me think it was just the tires, but it has gotten worse and worse and worse. Sometimes it takes 50 miles to happen, sometimes two, but when it does, I have to open the windows or shut off the blower.
View 10 RepliesNoticed a smell like rubber burning about 40 minutes into driving my car today. When I turned off the heater it went away. What this may be? Possibly the last legs of my heater melting away?
View 6 RepliesOkay, so the car in question is a 2003 Escort ZX2 with roughly 110k on the clock. It's run like a champ up until now. My wife was driving it home from work the other day and said that there was a burning smell coming through the vents, then the coolant temp gauge on the dash went all the way to hot and stayed there, and the heat simultaneously stopped working.
She got it home and I quickly found out that the car IS NOT overheating. Something screwy is going on with the gauge and it will sit at cold for 10 minutes, then go all the way to hot, then sit in the middle, and it's just all over the place. However, the engine fan works fine and comes on at the appropriate time, the engine does not overheat at all, and other than the gauge acting weird and the heat not working, the car runs as it always has.
So, just a as a measure of preventative maintenance I replaced the thermostat, thermostat housing, and both clip-in coolant temp sensors on the thermostat housing. This seems to have fixed nothing, but oh well.
Next, I let the car heat up and checked the two hoses going to the heater core in the firewall. One hose is just slightly warm (even at full operating temperature) and the other is completely cold.
When you get in the car and attempt to turn the heat on, all the blower motor speeds work. When you turn the dial from cold to hot you can see under the dash that the cable that opens the blend doors is working fine as well. However, no heat at all, it's just cold air that comes from the vents even on the hottest setting.
The heater core isn't leaking at all, this has been confirmed.
So, I'm unsure where to go from here. The wacky coolant temp gauge seems like maybe it's the actual gauge itself that's gone south (in which case I'd need a new gauge cluster I suspect). The heat though perplexes me. Sure, the heater core could be plugged but that seems rather unlikely considering the coolant has always been regularly flushed and when you open up the radiator there's no gunk or rust or anything in the system at all.
I drive a 2003 jeep liberty with about 98,000 miles.
Over the course of this winter, I've noticed a very strong smoky / burning smell whenever I've had the heater and blower on in my car. It's easier to notice it when the car is sitting still (say at a stop sign), or driving slowly. If I shut the car off and walk around it, I notice the same smell outside of the vehicle, around the front end.
My initial guess was an exhaust leak. I've had two independent shops look over the exhaust system carefully (with a probe) and they've found no leaks anywhere. They also checked all of my fluids (including oil), and said that everything was at the proper level. I also had them spray some cleaner into my vent fan's duct work, just to see if that would do the trick (they didn't charge me for it since they weren't 100% sure, and it didn't work).
The other day, I stopped the car and noticed a small amount of gray smoke coming out from under the hood. I had just bounced over a pothole when I noticed the smoke. I opened up the hood (with the engine running), and saw a small amount of smoke coming out from the left side of the engine, from beneath the coolant reservoir. The smoke was dark gray in color (looked almost like wood smoke). I asked the mechanic at the gas station where I'd pulled over to take a whiff - he said it smelled like burning oil. Within about 30 seconds, the smoke was gone, but the smell lingered.
He told me that there could be a small amount of oil leaking down onto the exhaust manifold and burning up, but that was just a guess.
So here's what I want to know. This smell is terrible. I have to figure it out, because whenever I turn the blower on, the smell is practically choking me. In the interim, I've been checking the oil level every time I drive (once the engine is hot), just to avoid a potential disaster. The oil level has been consistent over the last couple of days, though I haven't been driving very much.
I'll bring it back to the shop, but what should I ask them to examine? Could it be a bad valve cover gasket? Loose oil filter? Something else? Is this a problem that many Liberties have?
I have an extreme burning smell coming from my heater whenever it is on, curious I put the fan on cold and it still has the burning smell. I pulled over and got out of the car he popped the hood and I don't smell anything underneath the hood. I've been leaving it off because I don't want anything blowup on me... It is a 98 chrysler sebring convertible, and the low and medium don't work on it, it only turns on on high....
View 9 RepliesI just noticed a burnt smell in the trunk of my 2013 Elantra Limited with 4,000 miles. You can't smell it inside the car. Called the dealer and was told, "Oh, don't worry, that's the burn-in smell", it will go away in a few weeks".
View 5 RepliesAfter driving about 60kms yesterday for the first time and driving pretty cautiously to break the car in i noticed a pretty strong burning plastic like smell in our garage.
This is only my 3rd brand new car and i don't remember the other 2 having this smell..
does hyundai coat their new cars with Cosmoline? or another protective coating that burns off and takes a bit to go away?
We have a 2015 Santa Fe Sport AWD (without turbo). It has about 4,200 miles on it. Recently my wife complained about a burning smell that she hadn't noticed previously.
I drove it and noticed the smell. Pulled into our garage and left the engine running and noticed a minor, but noticeable amount of smoke coming out from the hood on the passenger side. When I opened the hood it appeared the smoke was coming from the lower, back side of the engine.
I later went out and started the car and let it idle for a bit. Didn't notice any burning smell or smoke. Later drove it again and noticed the smell and a little smoke. So it seems like it occurs when the car has been driven rather than simply started and not driven.
About a 2 weeks ago I took the 2011 in to Hyundai to get the oil changed. (For the record I brought my own oil and Bosch oil filter). Anyhow, yesterday, noticed a nice pool of oil under the car after the first stop on errands. Looked underneath, and sho' nuff, there was a good little stream of oil. Made a bee line to the same dealership to drop it off. On the way we could smell burning oil and it was running like crap.
The service dept is open on Sunday so they called to tell me it was just the filter, he said probably a "burr" ?? and it can happen. My questions are Why did it take two weeks to start and should I be worried more damage happened? Supposed to pick it up tomorrow so trying to be prepared.
I have 2011 Elantra at ~20,000 mile, and strange things started happening since last year...and it kinda blew up today.
My dashboard has been flickering randomly for a while, as in everything goes dark and turns up again in the middle of driving.
And today it turned off and turned on (as it usually does), and the dashboard seemed broken; speedometer stuck at 0 mph, rpm meter stuck at 0, all warning lights turned on, gas meter going up and down and stuff.
Fortunately enough I was close to home so I drove it back home, and my gear shift was stuck at neutral (I could switch b/w N and D).
So I took out the shift lock release? thing and managed to put the gear to P and pull my key out. I stepped out of my car and I smelled something burning...not a very good sign. What should I do? Well I think I need to take it to dealership tomorrow but I'm not sure if it'll be safe to drive...
Today I noticed a strong burning rubber or plastic smell coming out of the right rear wheel well. All other wheel wells did not have this odour.
We had a bout of freezing temp's here recently and some snow, I'm wondering if the brake on that wheel may have seized slightly through the all wheel drives tourque vectoring or through parking brake use.
I'm going to drive it to the dealership tomorrow without making an appointment in hopes they will look at it right away as making an appointment this time of year is probably going to take forever.
Something I might be missing or can do?
I have a new 2013 Hyundai Accent (automatic, 4 cylinder) with less than 1500 miles on it. The day I drove it off the lot and up until today, it randomly smells like burning rubber. It happens whether it is hot or cold, driven two miles or thirty miles. The smell is coming from under the hood but I know very little about engines, so I'm not sure what it is. I have told the dealership and they don't seem to care. I may not know much about cars but I know that that smell is not normal, especially in a new car. What could be causing this...
View 7 RepliesOk, here's the situation... (Elantra GLS - Automatic)
I was at a 4-way stop sign. No other cars were around so I accelerated. Then suddenly, I hear and see a car coming at me REALLY fast, and well, I panicked. I floored the throttle (almost literally), and I heard something popping or maybe it was a farting sound... It happened so fast that I don't remember clearly...
Then behind me was a HUGE cloud of smoke behind me. I mean really, it covered up the whole street. It was 10 PM, so I couldn't really tell what color it was, but it seemed to be white... So I turned off my car. Checked the engine, no smoke from the engine. I started it up again, and instead to revving to about 2000 rpm at start up like it always does, it only went to about 1000, and more smoke was flushed out the exhaust.
I was close to home, and with no 24-hour mechanic shop around me, I drove home. As I drove home, I had quite a bit of smoke trail behind me which scared me through out the whole 2 minutes of driving. I got home, and I checked the exhaust again, but there was no more smoke. However, a burning smell lingered around the exhaust.
I just got some gas in my car today. I didn't fill up. I put in $25 worth which wasn't enough to come close to filling the tank. After getting gas and driving away I noticed that there was a very strong smell of fuel in my car. It made me feel extremely nauseous and sick just from the 5-10 minute drive home. I noticed the smell is also noticeable in my trunk when I opened it to take my groceries out.
When I picked up the gas pump to put it in the hole to fill up the tank there was some residual gas in the pump from the person before me that spilled out into the gas hole area and dripped down the side of my car but I'm not sure why that would cause a fuel smell inside the cabin and the trunk. Would it??
What the problem might be? As I said this is the first time it's happened in my car (it's a 2013 with just over 20,000 km on it) and I didn't even fill the tank so I don't believe it's possible for overfilling to be the issue here.
Today, it is around 25 degrees F here, and I drove my prius C for 5 minutes or so before turning on the heater. To my surprise, the heater had already "warmed up" and the air coming from the vents was warm. Does the electric heater element warm up when it is cold outside even when the heater isn't turned on? Don't know if it matters, but I was in Eco mode at the time.
View 9 RepliesI have a 2002 Mitsubishi Diamante LS. I know I know, but I am a poor student (emphasizing poor), and this car is paid off. Anyway, A couple months ago I drove through a puddle, water splashed up into the engine area and my car died. I was able to start it an hour later (after it dried out, I guess) Since then, there have been a couple times that it wouldn't start right away, it took a good 20 minutes for the car to start after the initial try, both of these times have been after a heavy rain. And now, occasionally, I smell a slight electric burning odor. I replaced the battery after the "driving through the puddle" incident. I just hit 80,000 miles. Obviously there is one or more issues I need to deal with.
View 3 RepliesProblem we experienced today with our 06 Prius - 63k miles. Up to this point, the car has been completely trouble-free. Abruptly, there was an extremely strong, foul electric-like smell throughout the cabin. No sudden acceleration, not pulling any heavy loads, no out of the ordinary driving. The weather was in the low 60s today. No a/c or heat being used at the time. The smell persists or becomes even stronger after the car sits turned off for several hours. the battery vent was not blocked, but the smell does appear to be stronger at the vent. The smell is so strong that we can't tolerate sitting in the car.
View 9 Replies