my 911 smelled funny this morning...

[RichMason]

I drove to work with one hand on the fire extinguisher. Smelled mostly musty with burning oil and wiring overtones and a deep base note of wet dog. It has been raining for a week and I put the car up wet after Saturdays PP drive. Do old 911s react to water this way?

[Tim Walsh]

hmm.. it is a targa Yours sounds like it smells alot like mine and I have a decent sized leak near the passenger side footwell. Some one else would know more than I.

[tryan]

i like that smell

if you have an eggy smell, check your batteries for spuage. see what your voltage output is across the rpm range.

if you smell gas, find the leak pronto. did the carbon canister get smacked durring the twisties? i found out andy's gas cap seal is bad on the white beast. i ordered one. i might be buying it we are talking. anybody need a 74 914 2.0 and a 72 t?

if you have a musty funk, pull all the carpet that comes out....out.
spray woolite is my favorite. i really do like the vw smell. that old nasty horsehair has a unmistakable odor.

if you are smelling oil, just go faster.

[targa911man]

Originally posted by RichMason
Smelled mostly musty with burning oil and wiring overtones and a deep base note of wet dog.

Hmmm--that sounds an awful lot like a cigar I smoked last week.

But seriously, were you running the heat/defroster? Water may have collected in your heat ducts during the rain and festered, which could account for some of the odors, particularly if the ducts were dirty to begin with. I agree you should take the carpets out and shampoo & dry them if they got wet.

[racemor]

I heard a similar story last night at the PCA meeting about somone who's voltage regulator went bad. Like tryan said, he could smell it as he was driving and the battery got very hot. If there is an acidic smell I check the regulator. Or, maybe there is a wet dog in your trunk. You did not scrape any road kill on your way home did you? eewww!

[RichMason]

It's interesting actually. On the way home from work I lost a cylinder. Isn't clear what the exact cause is but it looks like a tight valve or a bad injector. At idle, its popping through the intake and when I drive, it's a constant backfire through the exhaust with a clear miss on one cylinder. Only starts once it gets really hot.

[tryan]

sounds like a possible bad wire or connector, brought on by high moisture. i would swap a plug wire to a different cylinder and see if the problem moves with it.

a worn injector would dribble and give you starting difficulties from lack of fuel pressure. worn injectors make a 'nailing' sound.

a clogged injector would give you the lean symptoms you described ( lean backfire through the stack or the one bad injector is making the other 5 run lean.


i used 89 octane for the first time since ownership ( at the advise of this board ). now she is chomping at the bit and always wanting more pedal. i'm going to drain the fuel and go back to 93.

i can mail you a couple used injectors if you want. if you are going to buy new ones, prices vary alot. shop around.

[RichMason]

I replaced the wires, plugs, cap and rotor with no success. The plugs on that side of the engine were BLACK, which lens itself to a mixture issue but MFI runs rich in general. My compression two weeks ago was perfect and the engine isn't making any noise. What is making noise, however, are the linkages/butterflies/whatever in the MFI. I though I had a dozen loose valves until I held the linkages still at the butterflies. Shut is right up. I'm thinking that the butterflies are worn but I will have an expert check them out later. As for the offending cylinder, it is perfect until it warms up. At idle, it sounds like I have loose hardware floating around inside of it - sharp metalic sounds - but I believe these are from the popping back into the stack, rattling the butterflies. Adjusting the air screw and the butterfly stop screw only makes it worse, not better.

I would be grateful if you could mail me a few injectors for testing. I will send you a separate email with my address.