I recently purchased a 09 Silverado with 73,000K and have periodically noticed a faint Antifreeze smell outside the vehicle near the engine when I park it in the garage. I cannot find any leaks and have not added any coolant. It does not smell inside the truck. Could a pinhole leak do this and not easily show up? Any way to test for this.
View 2 RepliesI have an 02 passat with about 85K and the other day my windows would not clear up and a faint smell of antifreeze. also when temp control is in cool and you move the temp control to warm steam comes out of vents. I need to know if i could change this myself and if any procedure on how to do it.
View 3 RepliesI have a 2011 Elantra Limited. No nav. I really like it. But I often smell the sweet smell of hot anti freeze/coolant coming from the engine area. I see no visible signs of anything wrong. My past experiences with this smell usually indicated overheating or a leak.
View 14 RepliesI have a 2011 F350 diesel 6.7l. I have had this smell outside the front of the vehicle for months and so I took it finally to a dealer to solve the leak problem. They spent hours on it and eventually found a leak in a tube at the rear of the engine under the intake manifold and supposedly solved my problem. That was 2 weeks ago and I have driven about 300km.(180 miles) but the smell is still noticeable. How long should I wait before it goes away or should I return it to the dealer for further work?
View 6 RepliesMy truck is losing antifreeze. It seems to push it out over flow jug. I have changed thermostats. This work for temp but not problem. From what I have found this engine is reliable. 2005 Chevy Duramax....
View 2 RepliesI just got a 2008 Passat and have noticed that after I start the car, for about 10 seconds, I can very faintly smell coolant, it happens when the fan is off or on, and the temp is either on hot or cold. Its not bad, but it is there for short time.
It reminds me of how my older VW's would have a bad heater core, but even that was only noticeable if the heat was ON, this happens heat on or off. Also I see no leaks in the engine of any sort, the car only has 150 miles on it currently.
My windows seem to fog up a lot and there is a hint of an antifreeze smell. It happens almost every time I switch off recycled air. Also, the AC when it first comes on has the same antifreeze like smell. I can run the AC or defrost and the windows clear up and the smell goes away but this doesn't seem normal.
View 7 RepliesWhen I turn on my AC. I am getting almost a wet dog smell. Could that be from? Didnt seem to smell like antifreeze. This is new to me....
View 13 RepliesCan sometimes smell antifreeze while driving but have not found any leaks and fluid is full?
View 3 RepliesI have a 2009 nissan rogue that when driven for 30 minutes or more with the ac on leaves my clothing smelling like exhaust (faint smell). I have had the dealership look at the car and they cannot find anything. We have replaced the interior cabin air filter and I still find the smell. this is not something that I notice while driving until I have been in the car for 30 or so minutes. My wife also notices the smell in her clothes after driving and now won't drive the Nissan. We are running the car with maximum AC turned on with the air recirculation button on as well. SO, theoretically, no outside air should be getting in but it still seems like our clothes smell like we have been in a traffic jam with the windows down after 30 minutes of driving.
View 7 RepliesI have noticed a smell of antifreeze in the cab of my 1998 Ford F-150 truck. 8 cylinder 4.6 litre triton engine. Some friends say the heater core has a leak. The windshield fogs up when running the defroster. How difficult is it to replace the heater core?
View 7 RepliesWe were driving home yesterday and all of the sudden the car started to over heat and we could smell antifreeze. We turned the ac off and put more water in it. Today we just had to make a short trip somewhere (we were planning on having it looked at first thing Monday morning). The temperature gauge never showed it overheating but as we pulled into our driveway we heard a knocking sound and it just shut off. Iit may just be a leak and it caused the car to over heat??
View 19 RepliesI know if you smell antifreeze when you turn on the heater that is a bad thing. I don't have this issue, but when I walk into the garage after my wife turns off the van I get a whiff of what smells like antifreeze. There isn't a leak that I can find and nothing on the floor the garage out the normal.
2006 Dodge Grand Caravan 80K miles
I can smell antifreeze under the hood, so I took it to be pressure tested. They found no leaks, but I can still smell it. When I add it to the reservoir, it goes down. What can I do ?
View 5 RepliesSo I started my car today and when I got back in it about 5 minutes later I could smell gas, faintly, but it was undeniable. I ran my vin through vw's recall system and came up empty. I'm going to get it checked out on Monday.
Also on my way home from dinner my radio stopped producing sound. When I tried turning the volume up the volume bar wouldn't move. I was on xm radio at the time and I switched to fm and am with no difference. Then I switched to my sd card. I was able to select a song but it wouldn't load on the main screen. I turned my car off and nothing changed. I tried using my phone and that worked, but after, the radio still wouldn't work. Then about 5 minutes later it started working again. So weird.
I saw that other people had problems with their stereo but it didn't seem the same.
About a month ago, I smelled a very faint smell of radiator fluid inside the car while the air was on. This happened twice, once on the highway when RPM's were running fairly high/engine temp was slightly higher than usual, and once on sidestreets when I was driving at high RPM's/in lower gears than normal (manual transmission). When I stopped the car it cooled down to normal level immediately and smell went away. I added coolant to the reservoir.Then I noticed nothing for about a month, so I figured everything was OK.Last week, my engine was running hot (usually is at 50% on the temp gauge, it was at 75%, where 100% is red zone), driving at low speeds.
About 5 minutes before that, I had the heat on but noticed the air blowing in the car was not heated even though the engine was warmed up (I assume due to lack of radiator fluid flow through the engine). The car did not overheat, because I pulled over and added water, and later added some coolant. During that incident I did not notice any smell inside the car. At the end of the week, I noticed the car running slightly hot and checked the reservoir. It was low--most of the coolant I added had disappeared in just one week.
Usual things to check:-radiator and all hoses are new-no leaks under the car-no white exhaust/smoke or smell outside
Other things about my car: It is a 1997 Honda Civic. Has never had any major problems, and it's running smoothly, but it does burn oil. The first time I noticed the smell, it was just after I had driven on the highway with slightly low oil level (still on the dipstick, but slightly below the bottom dot. Not too far on the highway--about 20 minutes). Not sure if that could be related.
CEL came on. No performance issues or noises coming from the car this time around. I did notice that after parking and killing engine, there is a faint exhaust-type smell though. I took the car to my local Advance Auto Parts and had them hook the car up to their computer for a diagnostic. Two codes came up.
1: P0431, warm-up catalyst efficiency bank 2 below threshold pending
2: P0431, warm-up catalyst efficiency bank 2 below threshold confirmed
The AAP employee didn't have anything to add to the code readouts. I'm concerned that this is a catalytic converter issue, and if that's the case, a repair would likely cost more than I'm willing to put into the car at this point. It has just over 125K miles on it.
i am having problems shifting. it wont shift into reverse all the way and when its in drive it has a hard time shifting from first to second gear and wont shift into third.
View 1 RepliesI have a 1999.5 Jetta 2.0 question:
When I run my defrost with the heat on, I smell antifreeze pretty strongly. I am also having trouble keeping the windshield defogger/defrosted without the heat constantly blowing on it. Signs point to heater core, right? So I tried a bottle of Bars Leaks aluminum radiator stop leak with the metal flakes in it. When I run the heat on the feet or front/face/torso setting, it does not smell like antifreeze (unless it's when it very first starts and it's so slight that I don't notice). When I run the defrost with the heat on, it smells pretty strongly of antifreeze. I see no antifreeze on the passenger side carpet.
This is my second vw I've owned and now I own a 20th ae gti. Just the other day I got out of my car and smelled antifreeze. So I popped the hood and realized there was no coolant in the reservoir.. So I went to my dealership, put some in... well that obviously isn't my problem, because the next day it was gone. Again. This is on sunday so I can't do anything about it. I made an appt to drop it off tonight @ my volkswagen dealer. It's not leaking, not smoking or burning, and the temp gauge isn't moving at all.
View 20 RepliesI only have about 3,500 miles on my car, every now and then I get a faint smell of possibly antifreeze when I open either of the front doors after a good drive. It's very strange because if I try to locate the source, the smell goes away. Once I exit the car and sniff around, there is no smell in the wheel wells, in the front grill, or under the hood. I then try to sniff under the car just under the front doors, and there is no smell! It is driving me crazy because it does not make any sense. My antifreeze level did not drop, and there is no evidence of any leaks. I didn't put it on my lift yet to examine it carefully, but I'll do that on the next oil change. I was wondering if there are possibly some hoses that go to the rear of the car for the rear a/c and heat. If so, maybe there is a slight leak on one of the clamps?
View 14 Replies