Over the last week I've noticed the occasional gasoline smell coming from the vents when the car's at idle. I can also smell it when opening the hood, but I can't find any obvious source. I've searched the forum to see if anyone else had this problem and found a couple of threads but I couldn't find any follow-up answers. I will have someone look at the car sometime this week. Has anyone had a gasoline smell issue and found the culprit?

 

What year, how many miles? Any other service issues?

 

2009, 50K miles, and other than that confounded moldy A/C smell, no issues. Gas mileage okay, drives fine, just came back from 800 mile round trip. I haven't overfilled or topped off while filling up.

 

Is this all the time or only on cold starts? I can smell a bit on cold starts when I back out of my garage cold, so I just close the outside air vent to prevent the smell from coming through the vents, then reopen it when I've started moving forwards.

 

I've noticed it when engine warm. Interestingly, I drove the car a short distance this morning and didn't notice any smell. I'm befuddled

 

Usually when this happens I'm in traffic. Looking ahead of me to see what sort of cars I'm following often explains it.

Do you notice how full the tank was when this happened? A full tank doesn't allow much room for expansion. The car does have vapor recovery, but this could be overwhelmed.

 

Tank is currently 2/3 full. I've smelled it simply by opening the hood when engine is running, so I know it's not cars in front of me in traffic.

 

With no obvious signs of leaking fuel, I would have to fallback on a pro's help. My suspicions would be the evaporative recovery system or fuel injection rail and/or injectors.

I'd probably ignore it unless it got worse. Which isn't wise, but it's the easiest course of action.

 

yep, what's the worst that can happen:


1. gas + manifold = engine fire
2. gas fumes + spark = BOOM


If you are smelling raw gas from underneath the hood and not just exhaust fumes, then you need to go get it checked out immediately. One other thing you could have done up to this point, but I don't encourage that you wait to do so now, is to check your MPGs to see if you have a severe drop off, possibly indicating a rich fuel mixture or a direct loss of gas onto the ground. Anyway, just go get it checked out today.

 

Ugh, I would rather smell gasoline than those old socks!

 

so...took it to dealer. They couldn't duplicate problem or find anything. I'm fairly certainly I didn't make it up because two other members of my family noticed the smell over the weekend. Dealer thought if it was evaporative canister, the check engine light would be on.

In any case, thanks for the thoughts. If it recurs I'll post back.

 

We're all glad you continue to be safe. That's all that matters. Having owned many Corollas that suffered from evap code errors and evap tank replacements, I do agree with the dealer (that's a first) that there would have been a code should that have been the problem.