Just noticed this today when I drove my car very briefly a couple times, the smell of gasoline after the car was turned off. Never noticed that smell before, wondering why or if this has happened to anyone else, what could be the cause of this? Could it be from running regular gas? I am switching to premium but it still has some regluar in it. I'm wondering if it is just running rich.

 

04xtype04, odds are, you simply stepped in a little bit of fuel and drug it in with you and with the dash blower running, you don't smell the fuel, but when you turn off the car, the vapors can run straight up to you. that is normally what I see happen based on the scenario you mention.

 

Is the smell inside the car or outside? If it is outside try and see if you can find the location where the smell would be stronger. I would doubt it would be running rich because if it would be that bad you would notice drivability issues and you would have a check engine light.

Has your gas mileage gone down recently? If so, you might have a small leak somewhere.

If you maybe drove through a little pool of gas last time you filled up that might linger a bit outside the car, but I would think that would dissipate pretty quick. You might try going through a car wash and getting an underbody flush. That should take care of it. If it continues there must be a leak somewhere and you would want to address that quickly.

 

Hmmm... the smell was outside the car. I drove it around a little today though and didn't notice the smell though so whatever it was seems to have gone away. I've done a couple things to the engine not too long ago though so I was thinking the car was overcompensating and adding more fuel that wasn't getting burned. Maybe the ecu fixed the problem. It also has about half regular gas in it too, so I need to get some more premium and start using premium from now on. Noticed before the engine was making sounds and running poorly on regular til I read that you're supposed to only use premium. Car has been getting pretty good gas mileage though and running much better since I added premium.