Fuel Smell

[dan b]

The Wife says that she smells gas while driving our 1994 Q This is a raw gas smell. Dealer said the repair would cost 7500.00 He gave me a list and it includes replacing the complete fuel system from the tank to the fuel injectors. The tech told me that the fuel lines to the fuel rails under the intake manifold are suspect. I have removed the intake. What a job. the fuel lines dont be appear to be leaking. I think he was just guessing. has anyone experienced this before. Could it be fuel regulators or a bad injector. I noticed an intake runner gasket drivers side not appear to be sealing. injectors looks like they are sealed. The smell is in the drivers cabin while driving then when we park it it is strong by drivers side out side hood and windsheild. Their dosent appear to be any signs of leaking Fuel any where So far as i tear it down. I hope i can get it back together Again. Any help Or sugestions Would Be Greatly Apriciated thanks.

[elwesso]

My guess is its coming from under the plenum, really common. Check the hoses in the back... It may not be obvious.

Turn the fuel pump on (turn the key on, pump will run for 5 seconds).. See if you see any drips.. It wont take much to make a smell..

its pretty common for old Q to leak fuel under the plenum.

[Woot!]

Yeah, most of the time it is a 3" piece of hose under the plenum. I just barely replaced it on mine and it is a project. If you paid the dealer to do it than they would probably charge $500 to $1000 to do it. Good Luck

[sdkhalsa]

On my 94 Q, it was the hose between the fuel line and the fuel pressure regulator. The leak was very hard to spot although the odor was unmistakable. I was able to replace the hose without removing the plenum by sawing off one of the fuel hose clamps with a pistol style hack saw and using a screw driver with a cable type shank on the other. It was a real tortured type affair. I also used an over sized long nose pliers with curved tips to pull off the old hose and fit the new one. I removed the rear engine hoist fixture to give me some additional room to work.

[Q451990]

Dealer said the repair would cost 7500.00 He gave me a list and it includes replacing the complete fuel system from the tank to the fuel injectors.

Oh wow... that's an amazing qoute. I say your dealership had one of a handfull of things on their mind:

1) Hoping you'd say "how much will you give me on a trade?"2) Hoping you would go away... didn't want the work for some reason3) Hoping you would actually pay $75004) They are amazingly thorough and wanted to make sure it was fixed in one visit.

I bet half of the components aren't even available to them. They had to make fuel tubes especially for my Q in Japan and ship them here by boat in 2000 after the shipping company scraped them off of the bottom of the car.

All of that said. Replacing the rubber fuel hoses under the hood should take care of it. As other's have said, it's pretty common for the fuel smell to show up on the first start of the day after it gets cold. Anyhow, replacing the hoses should take care of it. Probably time for a complete under-plenum job if you want to be done with this for a while. Probably $1000 in parts and a day's labor cost. Not cheap but way better than $7500!

Welcome to NICO!

Heath

[dan b]

thanks heath do you think i should replace the coolant hoses to.

[Woot!]

You will need to eventually. If you are going to totally remove the plenum than I would highly recommend replacing all of the hoses under there. It is about a $900 job. Check out this thread: zerothread/299185 . Also there is a DIY thread on pulling the plenum and replacing the hoses under there.

[Q451990]

thanks heath do you think i should replace the coolant hoses to.

Absolutely - and as Woot! said, pretty much everything under the plenum that is rubber, as well as inspecting (and probably replacing) the knock sensors and it's harness.

I would also "ohm test" your injectors to make sure they're within spec. Anything marginal should be moved to spots 1 & 2 so that they can be replaced later.

The goal is to do as much as possible now, so that you don't have to continually pull the plenum over and over again for the next hose or part that fails. Of course, your budget will determine how in depth you need to go. Good thing is that anything we say should sound better than $7500!

Heath