Help - melted plastic bag on exhaust
 

so just got home and smelled a really burnt plastic smell. looked under the car and theres a melted plastic bag on my midpipe. tried to scrape it off but no good. anyone have suggestions. should i let the car idle and heat it up and try to wipe it off??

thanks guys

elbow grease and living with some smell for a while is the only was, sorry.

ps
i guess there is another way but who wants to buy a new exhaust

well it is on my megan midpipe i was thinking of just putting on the stock on and try to get it off somehow, but if i just let it burn off will there be any problems?

you can clean it up as much as you can, but once that stuff is caramelized on there its a pain to remove. If you can stand the smell, remove what you can, then just leave it, it will eventually burn off.

This happens a lot with motorcycles, so I have some experience.

You can do two things.

The first is nothing and just let it burn off, which may take some time.

The second is to use spray oven cleaner, the nasty kind that you don't want to get on your skin.

If you opt for the oven cleaner, be really careful you don't spray it on anything else other than the exhaust because it's very corrosive. It will very effectively remove that burnt plastic, however.

cool i did not know that, i'll try it if it happens to me

ive had to do this at work.. you run the car real hot or leave the car running and scrape it off with a paint scraper or similar, it comes off real easy, then the rest will burn off

so i just ended up running the car real hot and scrapping off as much as i could only left with a little bit of burnt extra. that really worked well except for the part when my finger touched the pipe that hurt alot -_-. one question left, say i wanted to take a torch and just heat up the plastic residue to get it to burn completely off, will that warp or mess up the mid-pipe? i dont think the car by itself will get hot enough to bun off all the way.

Thanks guys for all the help

The plastic will burn off before you could do any damage to the pipe. Be careful not to overheat any of the surrounding undercoating or paint on the body though.

I replaced a muffler on an old Triumph Spitifire. I couldn't easily scrape the manufacturer's paper and plastic labels off so I just left them on. A couple of hot days later, the labels smoked for about 5 or 10 minutes while I was sitting in the middle of traffic. No smell after that.

Haha, the one and ONLY time I let my mom drive my Fit, she ran over a plastic bag. This happened back in May (I think) and I can still smell it, Sorry for the bad news, just wanted to warn you... grab a Snickers, cause it's gonna be a while.

hahaha, it was happened to my toaster as well. the plastic was melted on stainless surface, if I scrape it off it will leave scrathes. I use nail polish remover, it worked !!!! plastic came off without sratching. worth a try if you have stainless pipe.

u sir should be paid for advertisement cuz that was old school haha. i had to remove some off of a customers car about 2 months ago.. get it in the air and take a nice sharp rasor blade and keep taking away at it. side effects may be a scratched mid pipe. at least it wont smell bad and melted plastic is very poisonous to smell

Glad I could make you laugh :p

burning plastic smell
 

We also had a sudden, very strong smell of burning plastic from our five-month-old 2009 Fit. We were going to take it in to the dealer, then I decided to check under the car. On the exhaust pipe approximately under the rear passenger side door, it looked like candle wax had been melted all over the pipe, except it was hardened plastic.

Here is what I did:

Obviously, wait until the car is completely cooled down, because the exhaust pipe gets very hot while driving (hot enough to melt plastic).

Get a razor blade paint scraper with a metal handle of the type shown in this link:
http://factsfacts.com/MyHomeRepair/i...adeScraper.jpg
Make sure you are using a new, sharp blade.

Lay a large piece of cardboard or newspaper on the ground to collect the shavings. Lay down on your back beside the car so you can reach the problem area. Prop a flashlight up so it shines on the pipe. CAREFULLY start carving away at the melted plastic, keeping your free hand out of the way of the blade. Remove as much of the plastic as possible. When you get down to the metal surface of the pipe, you can continue to glide the razor blade over the surface to get the last residue off, similar to scraping a thin layer of paint off of a glass window pane.

Any remaining plastic that you can't reach will have to be left to burn itself off.

After doing this I did not notice the burning plastic smell any more.

wear gloves!!!!!