mofoco

Have strong gas smell under hood after driving...Any trouble shooting tips?

rkw77080

Here are a couple of drawings showing your fuel system under the hood. The engine is fed by a single fuel line from the tank. It's connected to 2 fuel delivery pipes each with a pressure pulsation damper. Each fuel delivery pipe supplies fuel to 4 fuel injectors. The o-ring is usually the first part to fail. The best time to find fuel leak is when the engine is cold, for 2 reasons: 1) materials typically expand when heated (leak decreases), and 2) the leaked fuel, if heated, will evaporate quicker and become more difficult to detect.

Arcturus

+1 on a possible leak from one of the fuel injector o-rings. As rkw77080 says, check when cold. This is when the parts will have the biggest gap.

Since the system is under a lot of pressure even a pinhole leak will spray fuel out.

After first starting the car look for a wet spot that smells like fuel near the top or bottom of each injector. If you see it, get some new o-rings, relieve the pressure in the system (usually by pressing a Schrader valve with a rag to catch the fuel - not sure on this vehicle though), remove the injector and replace the faulty o-ring. Make sure you release the pressure in the fuel rail before working on it or you may get a nasty surprise!!! Should be a very cheap fix.

I had this problem on an old pickup when I replaced the intake manifold. I put new o-rings on the injectors after I removed them, but they were aftermarket and didn't fit well.