Strong fuel smell

[petersw]

For the last few weeks, I've been noticing a very strong smell of fuel (or perhaps exhaust) while driving my '04. The smell is intermittent, but seems to often come after accelerating or going up hill (I live in San Francisco, so this happens fairly often!) It's gotten to the point where passengers are not to happy about riding with me.

I brought the car to my local dealer, who told me that they couldn't find anything wrong, and couldn't smell it themselves. The only thought they had was the the charcoal canister could have become contaminated with fuel due to topping off of gas, but in that case the smell should only be there at the time of fill-up. However, I smell it even when the tank is nearly empty.

Has anyone else noticed this, or have any suggestions?

[DanMan32]

If there is any leak in the evaporative emissions, you would get a CEL. The engine applies a vacuume and then checks to see if the vacuume can be held. If it can't, the CEL is lit. This is why you get a CEL if you leave the gas cap loose.

Next thing to check is fuel line, being sure there are no leaks.
Next is looking around the intake manifold and aircleaner for leaks. The ICE does push fueled air back out the intake during compression, that's why there's a charcoal pack in the air cleaner.

Are you at the same place (geographically) when you smell gas? Sometimes I smell gas, and think it is me, but was someone near me.

[petersw]

The smell can occur pretty much anyplace and anytime. So I don't think its coming from anyone else.

To be honest, I think my next best step will be to take the car to another dealer. The place I brought it to (Melody Toyota) swore that they had driven it thoroughly to test for a smell, and also told me they put it on the smog tester to check the emissions. However, when I picked up the car, the odometer was still at the same mileage as it had been at when I dropped it off!

(and while I'm on the subject of the Toyota dealer, they've also been unable to get me an updated NAV CD for the past 5 months...)

Back on subject...Is there anything here I can easily check myself? (I'm not very mechanically inclined..)

[u4iia]

I have encountered a strong fuel smell in mine as well. Once at a light (couple weeks ago), and twice in the morning on the first start up of the day. I could have sworn it was a fuel leak. I did a quick visual but nothing was apparent Now that I am thinking about it I remember smelling fuel coming home from work (25 – 30 mph) the other day.