Anyone else experience the following?

When my car has been sitting in the sun for a few hours, upon getting in I can detect a slight burning smell (somewhere between electrical burn and clutch burn smell), which then gets very strong once I start the engine. As near as I can tell, it's coming out of the vents. I've sniffed under the hood, under the car, everywhere else, but it really only seems to come out of the vents. It lasts for 15-20 minutes, then slowly goes away.

It doesn't seem to happen in the morning hours when I get in, nor in the late evening.

I plan on taking it to the dealer next week, and I'd like to appear extra savvy if I can tell them what I think it is. :smile: Actually, I'd just like to know what direction to point them in since it's not always evident.

I just had the 10,000 oil change done, had the car for five months.

Thanks in advance.

 

Do you use your AC.only thing I can think of.

 

1. Reach over to the passenger side of the car and pull the hood release.

2. Go around to the front of the car and raise the hood, releasing the safety catch near the driver's side headlight.

3. At the rear of the engine, below the level of the valve cover, is a silver waffley aluminum plate that's the heat shield for the exhaust system. Locate this.

4. Carefully bend the heat shield up toward the valve cover until you can see under it. It's flexible, so you'll be able to do it without hurting anything.

5. Locate and remove the dead possum that crawled up onto your exhaust manifold to catch a warm night's sleep and that you fried on your way to work.

6. Bend the heat shield back to it's original position.

7. Close the hood.

8. Take the possum inside and make a tasty, if rather agrarian, meal out of it with carrots, onions, and small red potatoes.

 

 

Even if you don't see any baked roadkill on that AL shield, look around the same area for signs of leaked and evaporated coolant. Leaking coolant tanks were (are?) a common problem on MCS's for the first 2 or 3 (or 4?) model years. I thought that problem had been corrected, but perhaps not. Or perhaps your car was built on a day when they were scraping the bottom of the parts bin for coolant tanks and you got an old-version one.

My car (2002 MCS) typically smelled like burning Indian food for about the first 2 years until the third tank replacement did the trick.

 

Sounds pretty tasty

 

Thanks jsun, I think that's what it is. I took a closer look and the shield has no small amount of evaporated/baked on coolant. And the coolant level is rather low.

I've got an '04 MCS (March build).

Thanks for the help.

 

I've got the same smell. Mine started smelling just this week. It's between a burning electrical smell and clutch/brake dust smell. My car is an 02/04 build. I will check that sheilding and coolant runoff. Thanks!