So i noticed that when I abuse the car on my way home from work as soon as I get in the garage and shut it off it freakn smells terrible around the back wheels. It smells like burnt rubber but its not because i dont spin the wheels i just casually redline on the highway ramp.

The smell is kind of like burnt rubber but seems to be coming from around the differential area. I was pumping gas and i could smell it outside. And my muffler seems to be abnormally hot. Like i spray water on it and it just starts steaming everywhere peeeshhhhhhhh.

Im just worried about the smell though. What could it be? Maybe since the previous owner didnt abuse the car too much? I did change my differential oil to castrol syntec 75-90 GL5 and put the LSD additive. Could that be what burning up due to really hot temps?

 

Don't know what to say about the smell, but as for the muffler and rest of the exhaust...it's supposed to get hot. And stop spraying water on the muffler after driving it hard, you could damage the welds from cooling them down so quick with the water.

 

Like those people that de-snow their windshields with hot water..

 

bye bye kitty.

 

i would look under to see if you caught a plastic bag underneath somewhere.....

or as jedi so humorously put it.... bye bye kitty

 

plastic stuck to underside of car melting

 

Maybe you ran over a blow-up doll!

 

Probably not inside the differential case, but when you change transmission or differential fluids, it's very easy to get some on exhaust components from incidental contact with your hands, rags, drips, etc.. Even if you notice and wipe them off, it only takes a very small amount to raise a stink. Some parts of the exhaust may only reach temperatures high enough to volatize those oil traces when you're running hard. Also if the car is fairly new, it could just be similar traces from manufacture that are burning off.

Sometimes you can notice a sulfur smell from gasoline, Mazda has a TSB on that one, I believe.

Worst case would be the catalytic converter, which is also supposed to smell like sulfur. I've yet to experience a dying converter so I don't know how to distinguish that sulfur smell from others (gear lube often contains sulfur too).

How old is your car? For older models there was a recall to install a heat shield to keep the gas tank from melting.

 

my car is an 04 with 45k miles. CAT is new from july 09 so i doubt thats the issue. I wouldve seen a loss of power if it was dying. I wish I knew what sulfur smells like. Gas tank melting?!?! Oh boy does that sound dangerous. Im driving a ticking timebomb.

Im gonna check if i see anything around the muffler area. Is it possible the salt from the roads since its snowing over here is melting on the muffler?

 

you wouldn't necessarily have loss of power.
my last cat completely broke up into pieces and I had no loss of power. The smell however was very noticable.

hope you figure out what's wrong.

 

can you describe your smell? and where around the car is it the most noticeable?

 

Sounds like your car was in the range for the recall (3305G). Make sure your vehicle had that recall done. There should be a sticker attesting to this, per the following document.

http://www.coremazda.com/tsb/rx8/vehicle-inspection.pdf

It probably was done, but doesn't hurt to double-check.