Burning rubber smell after hard driving
 

Hey guys,

I've had my 8 for just about 3 weeks and I took her out to AutoX'ing on Saturday. Since then, there is this smell of burning rubber or plastic around the car. It *seems* to be localized to the front passenger side of the engine bay, but it's very hard to pinpoint. I've looked it all over and there doesn't appear to be anything missing.. or anything extra. So I'm curious if anyone has encountered this smell before? The car is an '04 but according to the service records it has had the motor mount update done.

It doesn't smell like clutch, or glycol, or brakes.. I know those smells already :) At first I thought it was the rustproofing burning off, but that would've disappeared by now. Smell appears regardless of what I'm doing with the car.. regular driving or pushing it. Could it be related to the cat?

Thanks!

stop dropping the clutch !

On the other hand there could be something stuck to the exhaust - have you had the car up on jacks to inspect underneath ?

Your suppose to clean the car, You get rubber marbels on the tires brakes and sometimes exhaust. Jack it up and check.

Are you running pre-mix? You should know the smell of a CAT. Also it may be possible some tranny fluid poped out the over fill hole and is now stikning to high Heavean.

By the way... if you ran into a cone and it got wedged up in the wheel well it may have touched your exhaust.

Also the undertray may have come loose and is rubbing.

Thanks, I'll check those out. I did drag a cone through almost the entire course and he got burned badly by the exhaust, but the area where he was appears clean now, and was in the rear of the car anyway. Not finding any other cone residue anywhere, but if there is one still trapped up in the undercarriage, that would be hilarious.

I wasn't premixing on this run, but will start doing that. Met a fellow RX owner there, who never premixed and has been autox'ing happily since 2005.. but still sounds like good insurance.

I guest this thread is over with but I want to add something anyway. Today I was driving hard on the beltway or average of 110 mph and all of a sudden I started to smell something strange. I smell fuel being burned but there was another rubber like smell but not all rubber almost mixed in with a radiator fluid type smell but I checked and nothing was out of place nor leaking and the car would sound like a 18 wheeler slowing down when letting off the throttle/slowing down almost a deep whistle/whinning sound

My smell has pretty well gone away... I guess something was caught on the exhaust and was cooking off slowly...

bhop: hmm.. are you distinctly smelling fuel (like running rich?) I haven't been in this game long, but that sounds like a cat issue.. is the power still there like it used to be?

yeah the power is still there, its not the cat, I have racing beat midpipe that was just put on there this past thursday. I know I need new coils and spark plugs but thats it and all dealerships say is that my engine along with everything else is perfectly fine at 87,000 mi lol. IDK maybe its jut my imagination. I think my car has been running rich prior to the race pipe and now I cannot tell, lol. I'm just going with the flow.

Enjoy the Exhaust smell with no cat. lol Share the wealth

Mine smells of burning rubber after dropping the clutch hard at 7KRPM in third gear at 30 MPH....