Burning Smell

[Treyz]

Since last night, the heater started smelling like something was burning. At first, I though it was a friend's deisel truck next to me, but when I was driving, noticed that it was my car.

Now I opened the engine bay and no smell in there and went behind and nothing. When I checked the the ehaust tip, I don't know if it's me but I thought that the exhaust wasn't blowing out as hard as it normally does.

The car is 2 years old and I have never experienced anything like this before. Only time I have (in terms of a smell different to this) was with the A/C, but making my own filter for the blower took care of that (which I did through a DIY on here before the hack).

Only other thing I can think of is if the stupid speedbumps at work somehow managed to pinch the exhaust without me hearing anything (have heard it twice, but nothing recent). I was going to jack the car up today to check, but it was raining. I'm gonna check tomorrow and if that's the case, then time to upgrade to the Nitto midpipe.

I have no idea. :iono: Anyone else experience something like this before?

[Mordarvia]

Does It Smell Electrical?

[PetersRedYaris]

Have you hit your exhaust on speedbumps? I suppose you could damage the seal between the header and midpipe creating a leak...

[Shroomster]

I'm thinking it might be the coolant reacting with "scale/rust/particulate/whatever" in the heater core for the hvac unit.....least thats what I always notice when I turn the heater on for like the two or three days out of the year I use it....just give it a few days to 'flush' it out; if it doesn't go away then its off to the dealer....


unless the hvac doesn't use coolant for the heater part I dunno I haven't messed with this car's hvac yet....

[*MAD DOG*]

Have you got loose papers in your drivers side glovebox? If so they can get sucked into the AC/Heater fan. It could cause a fire. My suggestion have a look.

[Phaeton]

I ran over a speed bump in a previous car and smashed the cat converter. 2 days later the damn thing caught on fire.

[Treyz]

Does It Smell Electrical?
Nope. Unless it's literally under the dash, checked everything I could see and all seems to be well.

Have you hit your exhaust on speedbumps? I suppose you could damage the seal between the header and midpipe creating a leak...
I have two times in terms of hearing something, but don't believe it did. Like I said before, I was gonna check yesterday, but it was raining outside. As long as the rain holds out today, I'm gonna jack it up and check.

I'm thinking it might be the coolant reacting with "scale/rust/particulate/whatever" in the heater core for the hvac unit.....least thats what I always notice when I turn the heater on for like the two or three days out of the year I use it....just give it a few days to 'flush' it out; if it doesn't go away then its off to the dealer....


unless the hvac doesn't use coolant for the heater part I dunno I haven't messed with this car's hvac yet....
I haven't flushed the system yet since I bought the car (normally I did every year with previous cars). It might be but wouldn't that smell different and sweet rather than a burning smell?

Have you got loose papers in your drivers side glovebox? If so they can get sucked into the AC/Heater fan. It could cause a fire. My suggestion have a look.
No, all papers are in the box securely. Plus I placed a filter there so it can't get sucked in even if the cover fell off. I have a carbon one and checked it to see if it was it, but no go.

[CTScott]

Were you by any chance running the heat for the first time this season?

Also, did the smell go away (and, if so after how long)?

[1stToyota]

I haven't flushed the system yet since I bought the car (normally I did every year with previous cars). It might be but wouldn't that smell different and sweet rather than a burning smell?


Yes, if your heater core was seeping at all you'd notice a sweet smell, and probably would notice that your windows were fogging, plus fluid leaking on the mat and/or on the ground if the leak was bad enough.

[Treyz]

Yeah nah, deff not a sweet smell.

Well after 3 days, the smell seems to have gone away.

Basically I let the car run and blow as stated by Shroomster. Still gonna look under the car just incase, but it seems to have done the trick. It was just weird that it had happened out of the blue. All 5 of my previous cars never did anything like that.

Were you by any chance running the heat for the first time this season?
No been running it for about a a month to two months.

[Shroomster]

Yeah nah, deff not a sweet smell.

Well after 3 days, the smell seems to have gone away.

Basically I let the car run and blow as stated by Shroomster. Still gonna look under the car just incase, but it seems to have done the trick. It was just weird that it had happened out of the blue. All 5 of my previous cars never did anything like that.


No been running it for about a a month to two months.

My civic does the same thing

and I remember in school the heaters would have dust on the coils from being in storage and you could smell the dust burning off

I haven't flushed the system yet since I bought the car (normally I did every year with previous cars). It might be but wouldn't that smell different and sweet rather than a burning smell?

actually I didn't mean to flush the coolant system I meant give it a few days of using the heat to flush out the smell

and yeah the sweet smell would be a leak because that smell stays with the coolant

the burning smell is an end result of the reaction.....

[vios7]

2 possibility ..from engine or exhaust. sometime i also burning smell when raining. confused :confused:

[b_hickman11]

Did you get married recently? Every time one of my friends gets married we do the traditional decorating of the get away car. We usually get a can of sardines and put it up under the dash so after a few days it gets to smelling pretty bad. Maybe someone is playing a joke on you?

[eric81]

Maybe something, like a small rodent, or a bug of some sort, got into the engine bay or heater area and it cooked itself on he engine or whatever. If it has gone away, that might have been it, and you would probably never find it because it would either be burnt to a crisp or may have fallen off or even fell into one of those neat spots in the frame section where things disapear.

Just a side note, I thought the joke was funny, but could have been followed up in the same message with something helpful. We all need to smile and laugh. Especially now-a-days. Drive On!

[Treyz]

Here's a funny thing. The night that this all started on, it happened again tonight a week later. Found out that it's the fog light system fuse. For some reason it has to do with the inline fuse.

I have the DLAA aftermarket ones. I connected it exactly to the DIY that was written before the hack with v2 so that I can get the foglight indicator on the cluster to work. Anyone else with the same fogs experience this?

Now I'm gonna have to go through the connections again.

[Malaya1221]

dlaa, is that the ebay version? i remember htm yaris having problem with the ebay yellow fog lights...

[1NZYaris1]

what size bulbs are you running in your fogs,
as the yaris prewired setup is only designed for 50watt max,
wireing is to light to run anything bigger safely.
just a thought.

[SilverBack]

I would start the car and let it warm-up. Then the second I would smell the burn, I would pop open the hood and sniff around for the same smell. If it's there too, then it's gotta be exhaust heat that's either too close to or it's coming in contact to something near the cabin air intake. I would then take care of it ASAP because I would be convinced that there's damage to somewhere in the exhaust line (possibly a hole or a knocked-loose connection), which could be causing more damage to something else since there's a burning smell. I would try not to drive the car until it's fixed just to be safe.

[CTScott]

Here's a funny thing. The night that this all started on, it happened again tonight a week later. Found out that it's the fog light system fuse. For some reason it has to do with the inline fuse.

I have the DLAA aftermarket ones. I connected it exactly to the DIY that was written before the hack with v2 so that I can get the foglight indicator on the cluster to work. Anyone else with the same fogs experience this?

Now I'm gonna have to go through the connections again.

That's kind of scary - Sounds like the fuse may have a higher rating than the wire connected to it, or there may be a bad crimp of the wire to the inline fuse holder. What is the rating of the fuse, and what size is the wire ("nn AWG" typically printed on the insulation every couple of inches)?

[Treyz]

OK .. looked at the fuse holder .. yeah totally melted (anything plastic). the 15amp blade fuse that was in there is stuck to the holder.

Conclusions could either be a bad crimp as stated above or that the fuse itself got so hot, that it couldn't melt to blow (as it should) and just melted everything around it. I literally opened the thing and the plastic around the fuse was melted. Anything metal stayed in tact.

The guage wire used is 16 I believe.

Any suggestions? Should I up the amp? Lower the amp? I mean obviously I'm going to get another blade fuse holder. Or should I get a mini blade fuse?

[CTScott]

OK .. looked at the fuse holder .. yeah totally melted (anything plastic). the 15amp blade fuse that was in there is stuck to the holder.

Conclusions could either be a bad crimp as stated above or that the fuse itself got so hot, that it couldn't melt to blow (as it should) and just melted everything around it. I literally opened the thing and the plastic around the fuse was melted. Anything metal stayed in tact.

The guage wire used is 16 I believe.

Any suggestions? Should I up the amp? Lower the amp? I mean obviously I'm going to get another blade fuse holder. Or should I get a mini blade fuse?


16 AWG wire is rated for 10 Amps, so the wire is a bit thin for the fuse rating. If the lights are 50W each, then they would draw approximately 4.2 Amps each, so you could drop to a 10A fuse to match the wire gauge.

Since just the fush holder is melted, I would bet that the real issue was a bad wire crimp. If the wire was significantly undersized the wire itself would have been warm or hot to the touch as well.

[Treyz]

So I tackled replacing the fuse holder today. The holder that I used originally was from the kit itself so it was just plastic and kind of cheap looking. It was originally for a large blade fuse as well.

Now I have a more waterproof heavy duty mini blade fuse holder from Radio Shack. used a 10amp fuse. We'll see what happens from there. Also, I looked under the dash today and checked out the fuse holder. The origianl fuse is a 15amp and is actually there. Unfortunately the mini fuse is different from tha I have now. No worries. Hopefully all will be good.

Here's the damage ...

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Treyz/100_2786.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/Treyz/100_2787.jpg

Basically the smell was being sucked in and came through the blower when is was smoking. The fuse seemed to be hot on the one side, but never blew. Weird. As you can see, everything melted that was plastic on the fuse. But the fogs still worked lol.