old wagon with fuel smell

monzstermonzster Band Wagon
in Electronics, Fueling & Air Conditioning
This is for anyone who owns a old school wagon. i have a 86 wago van thats carburated. for the past 2 months i have had this fuel smell that comes and goes. didnt matter if i was driving the car or sitting. after trying to find a leak which i never did, i noticed this black canister thats on the firewall. this canister has a hose in the bottom of it that goes nowhere. it looks like an ac drain hose. i put a plug in this hose and no more gas smell but after driving the car if i stop and try to start it, it is hard as hell to start like its flooded. unplug the hose car does fine but has gas smell. there is no fuel coming out of this hose. just vapors i guess. the car just started doing this out of the blue. i checked all the hoses going to the canister and all look ok. but i havent replaced them. anybody have any ideas? thanks in advance

Comments

  • ChaifeChaife Instagram grand master
    I have some of these old wagons as well, and each of them put off a smell...
    However, mine ONLY start smelling when I fill the gas tank completely at the pump; get greedy, and pull the pump handle for a second time..
    for that extra $0.50 "topping it off"
    It seems this little extra bit is making pressure leak somewhere, resulting in the pungent odor of gasoline..
    One of my EF CRXs does this also... :) Hope that helped.
  • 87wagonsteve87wagonsteve Wagonist
    Thats just the smell of raw power... mine does that too... it's Diablo himself trying to free himself from his eternal prison under my hood :P
  • wagopilot31wagopilot31 Wagonist
    Sounds like you have a positive-pressure inside the tank for some
    reason and it's pushing fuel out somewhere. As a test... can you remove
    the gas cap after you park the vehicle next time. See if the leak / smell goes
    away. Of course you must use your cap when you drive... but it may give
    some insight as to the root cause.
  • monzstermonzster Band Wagon
    UPDATE : after reading chaifes response i pulled the plug on the hose that i installed. the car was getting extreamly hard to start because of the flooding. i had a 1/4 tank of gas and drove untill it was almost empty. had a faint smell of gas a couple of time but nothing like before. i filled the tank but didnt top it off, stopped at the first click. i have driven the car 60 miles and havent smelled any gas smells as of yet. usually buy now it would have smelled. hopefully thats all it was. will keep everyone updated. THANKS
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