Hey All,

I kinda have a dumb issue and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing or something similar. In the morning (or when the car has been sitting at least 8-12 hours) when I start my car and let it run for about a minute, a weird smell starts coming from under the hood (not from the exhaust). The closest thing that I can compare it to is like woman's nail polish (although slightly different). It only does it for a brief second upon a cold start up and then goes away after about a minute or two. It never did it until about a week ago even though I've had the car for about 8 months now. I have looked and there is no smoke or anything like that... the car runs perfect, but the smell is awful. Not really concerned at this point, just annoyed.

Car is a 2008 MS3 with about 5K miles on it.

Any thoughts/ideas on what it may be?

Did your girl spill some nail polish on the engine while adding washer fluid? :dunno:

you might want to check and see if a plasic bag got stuck under there or something like that.

RX-7 Chris wrote:you might want to check and see if a plasic bag got stuck under there or something like that.

I thought about that too and quickly glanced, but figured if it was a bag or something like that, it would stink all the time not just for a minute or two.

My 8.5 MS3 did this for a while also. All that I could put it up to was the heat shields warming up and outgassing chemicals from their composition. I currently live in PHX,AZ. and with all the summer heat it slowly faded away.

I think I've smelt the same thing, also can't quite describe the smell as it comes through the vents. Smells like a burning though. Mine does it most if I gun it reverse a little. I smelt it again when I was Bandimere doing a test and tune a couple weeks ago too. I've got an 08.5, everything seems just fine (and no plastic bags either).

i had the same smell from my fc a couple weeks ago. i know its weird, but when i was trying to fix my rear wiper, one of the wires were burnt. might wanna check the wires jus in case