The smell happens 10 mins into driving and its not super strong but present. After driving the smell is in the engine bay also... Its dark out but I didn't see a plastic bag on my exhaust...it doesn't smell sweet like antifreeze though I'll check.

Btw its an 09 with almost 62k on it. Any ideas fitfreakers???

 

Did you check under your car, the cabin air filter, or possible wires melting? Could be your fan is getting really hot.

 

I don't know if it will help but check to see if you have a plastic bag stuck under your car. This happened to me, it was stuck to the exhaust right behind the engine.

 

I had the smell too the dealership power washed underneath my car and got rid of whatever it was. I probably had a mix of plastic bags and lots of mud because I live out in the country. The dealer guy said i had ten pounds of mud come off my car. I have friends with dirt driveways.

 

So I checked the exhaust: no bag. I put antifreeze in for good measure and checked fluids (all good).

Yet there have been developments: besides the smell, which is faint, there is a whining, almost whistling or high pitch sound coming from the engine while accelerating hard (around 30 mph or 3.5k rpm).

The engine feels good, great since the lms recall work was done, but I'm worried because of my high mileage (62k).

I'm about to check my air filter since I hear a similar sound when I accidently drove around without a filter many years ago. However is anyone has any ideas about this sound? (btw no loss of performance).

 

Air filter is fine. No plastic smell in bay 15 min after driving (wtf?). So both the sound and smell happens while driving (can't replicate while parked, or gunning it in a parking lot).

I'll wait 2 days then I'm bringing it to Honda (sniff, sniff)

 

take it to a carwash and hose it all down real good, underneath, engine compartment and see if it goes away. Check engine well for anything out of place that might be closer than normal to engine/manifold..etc causing it to heat up.
Check to see if you smell it when A/C and heat is on too.

 

You mentioned the air smelling sweet. Is that not normal? I notice the air coming from my vents when the AC is on sometimes has a sweet smell to it.

 

I can tell you a sweet smell (like maple syrup) can be antifreeze burning.

As for the smell: it doesn't smell when the ac is on and you can only smell it intermittently. I'll check when the heat is on.

Thanks to everyone sharing info: a friend asked me to check the axles to see if anything is stuck there since I can't smell it in the engine bay so much (or at all after 10 min) and I smell it when getting out of the car ( from the fenders I think)

 

Perhaps some plastic bag around your brakes?

 

rainy day here in NJ today....smell not as prevelant inside the car though after driving on the highway I can smell it around the front and by the rear passenger side

Weather permitting I will jack the car up and take a look at the exhaust and heat shields. I noticed the buzzing sound I'm hearing under low speed acceleration matches gear shifts perfectly so I hope its just a loose shield.

guess I'll check the ball joints while I'm under there since I got 62k on them...

 

Is your vent on recirculate or fresh air, I'm asking this because could it be a car infront of you?

 

I usually leave it on fresh air (unless in a tunnel or bad traffic)

I've confirmed the smell part. Sure enough I must have driven over a bag. Following the exhaust pipe to just before the rear right wheel, I noticed plastic droplets, residue from a bag long since ran over. The pipe has a large area of them so I'm going to do my normal drive (70 miles round trip) park her and start scraping with a razor.

I hope this is the reason for the weird sound when I accelerate. Hopefully the droplets provide some resonance or something which leads to the buzzing sound I've noticed not to long after noticing the smell.

 

I think you can just have at it with a brush/scrubber when cold, or if you really want to try it when hot, just have at it with a towel. If it melted enough to stick, it should be melty enough to wipe off. wear a glove and don't get burned.

 

i have noticed a burning smell which seems to be coming in through the vents, but only when i plug in a laptop charger into the cig lighter. It draws 90W which isn't a lot, but maybe it's the continuous draw of power that is causing wires inside the dash to get warm?

 

It's not trivial but the cig lighter/accessory power socket is rated for 120 watts (10amps@12V). Shouldn't be a problem. Even if your charger were wonky it would burn out a fuse before damaging the wiring. Still...

 

Check your coolant level asap!

My previous car (a nissan altima) had a bad water pump or something, and the coolant level dropped pretty far. The car never overheated, but a melty fishy plastic smell started coming through the vents STRONG once the car warmed up.

I finally popped the hood and reached for the plastic coolant overflow/resevoir tank. It was REALLY HOT. Once I got it open, I saw it was nearly empty, and the horrible smell was the super hot plastic and antifreeze odor.

Look there first!