SO about 3 weeks ago I started smelling a funny smell from my car'* exhaust. Now I have had plenty of problem cars, so I know too well the smell of burning oil, water, coolant, wires and tranny fluid. This is none of that. Imagine the smell of putting possums on a grill and letting them sit there cooking until they're burnt. That'* the smell I get.

My first notion was that a mouse had crawled up into my exhaust and met an untimely end, or maybe I had run across some road kill and rubbed some sticky flesh onto my exhaust system. After the smell didn't go away I jacked the car up and saw no remains of animals smeared on the bottom. I also figured that a burnt mouse would have gone away, but the smell persists and hasn't subsided much in over 3 weeks.

Anyone have any ideas?

could be a LIM or UIM :?

95 is a L36 so... Check your oil and coolant levels and check oil for any coolant in it.

Not sure what a LIM or UIM are. The fluids are fine. I check them regularly, I installed this engine about 20K ago and am still paranoid that something will happen. She runs like a top, but this smell is getting kind of irratating.

Oh....duh....Upper Intake Manifold or Lower intake Manifold? Sorry, I get hit in the head alot. When I installed the engine I checked both because of the known problems and they were good at the time. like I said, having no oil or water problems and the car runs fine. Just this smell

First, I have to say that I don't know what possums burning on the grill smell like, but I would assume that they might smell a bit like charring flesh.. :? BTW, I did chuckle while reading it.

Ok, so if I read this correctly, the smell is coming from your exhaust right? The tailpipe end, I assume?

Does it smell vaguely like rotten eggs or sulfer-like?

Darn you Lash..

If it'* a rotten egg like smell, that would usually indicate a bad catalytic converter. Whenever replacing the converter (which can easliy make the life of a car) you must ask if the O2 sensor is good. A bad O2 will dump excess fuel into the motor and cause the Cat to go bad.

Agreed with Bill, Pull the 02 and check if its dark grey or black at the tip, this would indicate a rich sensor. Also try changing your brand of gas, and a bottle of fuel injector cleaner.

While this is obviously where I was going with my line of questions, guys, I think that it'* too early to jump directly from burning opossum flesh to O2 and Cat (even though it'* maybe a reasonable jump).

I really think we should wait to hear back from birchy before we start spending his money.

Just my cautious way of doing things.....

Mikey.. I haven't spent money. Merely mentioning the typical source of the cooked o'possum smell if you aren't cruising by a restuarant in the south.

Well, since we're already well on our way into the analysis, I'm going to ask a few more questions to staisfy my curiousity.

Birchy, why did you swap the engine out? Did it have a previous UIM or LIM failure and was burning coolant?

Were you running too rich on the previous one?

Has the smell been around ever since you did the swap?