Hello,

I have a 2001 UN Neon RT. Every so often when I stop the car or when I park in the garage, I can smell a gas kind of a smell. By gas I don't mean gasoline/petrol. Its an exahst smell coming from the exhaust. Once I turn the engine off, the smell tends to go away fairly quickly. It does not smell all the time - it doesn't seem to smell on first start up, just after I have driven a few miles

Any ideas

Thanks :-)

 

may be a bad catalytic converter... they make a funky smell when they start to go bad. Have you noticed a decrease in performance of anyhting like that? Is the smell similar to the smell of a match or fire works? Or does it smell like a fart, seriously no joke, sometimes when they go bad they can smell like a fart... round the shop we call it a car fart

 

Well, from your two descriptions, it is more like a fart :-). It really does smell like a gas leak, but not as bad. Is it ok to drive like that. Also, I recently had the whole exhaust system looked at (due to a strange noise every so often at start up), and the garage did an extensive look at the whole exhaust system and could not find anything wrong - surely they would have spotted if the Catalytic converter was going wrong ?

 

well, if youve got a noise in the exhaust and a fart and petrol smell, then more than likely your cat may be bad. You might want to have them double check before you go replacing it. I would hate for you to spend money and me be wrong, but judging by what you have said... a bad cat would be my best guess. But like i said, thats just me best guess.

 

Yep its probably the cat...my friend is running a catless Audi A4 and every time i have to drive behind him it smells like ***...not sure if that happens on all cars that run catless, but thats more than likely the cause of your foul smelling odor.