Plastic burning smell????

[shadowstang03]

Any help or ideas for this problem???

Everytime for the last month I have had a burning plastic smell occur after turning off my car or reving the throttle while sitting still. I looked under the car everything looks normal, oil is full and clean , no smoke of any kind under the car or behind the car while running or after shutoff. Any ideas what this could be???


Thanks to all .......

 

[DarkFireGT]

have you checked the mufflers. This is usually caused by a plastic bag on the muffler or exhaust pipes.

 

[homebrewer]

I was going to say the exact same thing.

You probably won't notice plastic hanging off of the muffler/cats/pipes, but if you inspect it closely, sometimes its melted on there. Annoying? Sure, but it should burn off after a few thousand miles.

 

[sycd]

I had the same problem after driving hard with the Bamachips torq tune. Switched to a VMP tune, no problem since.

 

[cowtown]

Happened to me, I looked myself and had some peeps at Ford look while it was in the service bay, didn't see anything, it was really smelly. A week goes by and I had it in for on oil change and asked for them to take a look while it was up in the air and lo and behold there it was on the inside of the hpipe. It was burnt black so no real chance seeing it from most angles. It took a while but I rarely smell it at all now, sometimes a wiff here or there after a hard run.

 

[LV51FER]

Yep, carrier bags instantly melt and go black. Go along the pipe and scrape anything off with a Stanley blade. Just don't confuse it with the smell of hot rubber off the tyres....

 

[gtstang8706]

Ok..ive been waiting for someone else to complain about this! Im having the same problem. At first i thought it was my clutch but i dont beat on it and it usually only happens when i rev the car hard...on hill starts and just screwing around. I brought it to the ford dealer and of course its fine and everythings clean they couldnt pruduce the smell. So besides having to pay $50, it didnt solve anything! Any ideas besides the plastic bag theory?

 

[281Ponies]

Had the plastic bag thing happen with the factory h-pipe and it gave off one heck of a smell... the factory pipe has been replaced now and funny thing is I thought I smelled a plastic burning smell last night.
I've replaced the factory shifter as well and wondering now if it is related to the heat coming up under the console... mine gets warm almost hot to the touch sometime.

 

[stangdude2000]

Plastic bag thing happened on my old V6 - got caught in the Y-pipe. I knew it was there, but couldn't get under the car to get it off. Smell never went away from when it happened to when I sold it several months later.

 

[DarkFireGT]

Ok..ive been waiting for someone else to complain about this! Im having the same problem. At first i thought it was my clutch but i dont beat on it and it usually only happens when i rev the car hard...on hill starts and just screwing around. I brought it to the ford dealer and of course its fine and everythings clean they couldnt pruduce the smell. So besides having to pay $50, it didnt solve anything! Any ideas besides the plastic bag theory?

I would still put $10 on it being a plastic. Thing is, once they hit the exhaust, they shrivel up instantly, and can be quite hard to see. Unless you've looked on the top and bottom of all components of the exhaust system and engine, I would go with plastic bag or something similar.

 

[LV51FER]

The only other smells I get are the faintly fishy smell of rubber off the tyres and have you considered it might be a touch of the smell off the catalyst - sulphur i believe. Possibly using a low sulphur gas would help.