Hi guys,

I am new to the forums and the evo world. I just purchased an A/S evo VIII off another member, needs some work which is why I am into it, and just ran into this problem that has me scratching my head.

When I start the car cold, the cabin of the car (mostly passenger side) smells like the exhaust or oil. The car isn't throwing any codes, and I even hooked up my OBD2 to see if I could get a reading for leaks, but nothing is returning. After the car warms up, the smell isn't as noticable at city driving speed. It becomes more noticable when I hit higher RPM's. Searching through the forums offers no resolve. My brother had this issue with his WRX, but his issue only occured after oil changes. The oil change in my evo isn't recent, the oil levels are fine, so I am ruling this out.

I jacked up the car and took a good hard look for any leaks or holes in the exhaust, took a look through the engine bay, but haven't seen anything. It just passed NYS inspection, so I do not know why the issue is so sudden. I do know that a layered security set up was installed by the previous owner, so I am thinking there may be some holes in the engine firewall that I can clog up. I may have to get it on a lift and look at the exhaust from there.

Anybody experience anything like this?

 

If the car has/had a A/F guage the previous owner may have routed the o2 sensor under the passenger seat & there may be a hole there allowing exhaust fumes to creep into the cabin, which would explain why there is a smell mainly on the passenger side of the car during startup when it sitting still, & why it goes away while driving... make sure the little black rubber plug is actually under the car.

 

I had this on my WRX. I turned out I had a leaky hose clamp and coolant was leaking onto the exhaust. Shutting the engine down left pressure in the cooling system and so it would leak onto the exhaust until the pressure was gone. At start up the exhaust piping would be soaked and when heated the oil in the coolant would burn off. It smelled just like stinky burning oil. To find something like this pressure test the cooling system.

 

An update to this: put on a new exhaust system - there were quite a few holes (and welds) in the stock exhaust near the turbo that I couldn't see (we got the car on a lift this time). My brother and I pulled down the heat shield and didn't see any holes or plugs (or any indications of an 02 sensor reroute).

We checked all the clamps, a few were loose but nothing extreme.

I still get a slight smell, not as noticeable as before, but only when revved into higher RPMs. I had intended to do a coolant system check, then I blew out my transmission. So I got that going for me now.

 

Has the EGR/Evap system been removed?

 

And one last update to this - EGR/Evap was not removed. The exhaust manifold (stock ported) is leaking! I installed a new gasket, which solved this for the most part. Most of the smell is gone, only when I am WOT do I ever get any residual smells, but I need to swap in a new manifold. I picked up a ported manifold off a fellow forum member. Yay for easy problems to fix! Thanks all for the helpful suggestions.

 

There's a grommet on the passenger side behind the glove box. It was vacant from the factory but I drilled it out to run some wiring into the cabin. This is a popular place to do that. It could be the grommet is missing and you just have a hole there. Worth checking.