A few weeks ago my car started producing a toxic smell for no apparent reason. I drove it from work to home, about 3-5 minutes tops, and parked it for about 25-30 minutes for lunch. After I got back in the car and started it up, almost immediately I started getting this smell that I had never before had.

At first I thought it was just something in the area around my place, it was so foreign. Nobody who has smelled it thinks it''s coolant, so I''ve ruled that much out, but that''s about it. I''ve driven it as lightly as I can since then, usually only smelling the fumes after 10 minutes of driving or so(usually corresponding with my engine getting up to normal running temp). Over the past couple days, however, it''s gotten noticeably worse. The smell doesn''t wait anymore, and I can get a strong smell within a minute or two. As of last night, I heard a kind of ''whining'' in the engine now to boot, but I can''t help but think they are related. I''ve yet to take it in to be looked yet for monetary reasons, so now I''m hitting up the internet.

The best I can describe the smell is some kind of really sickly sweet, and I at first thought it might be coolant, not having much experience with cars in general. I''ve had 3 people since then who know much more than me say it doesn''t smell like any coolant they''ve smelled, and it seems more electrical or plastic in nature. No smoke that we can see(although my friend did claim to see a little smoke of some sort coming from under the right front wheelwell after the first time we experienced it). We''re pretty sure it''s confined to the passenger side of the engine, near the back corner area.

Also of note, the car was in a mild accident in January of 2007, and while it''s run fine since then, there was some slight shifting of stuff under the hood so I don't know how much this would affect the little things.

That''s about all I got here, any help would be very much appreciated!

This may be a stupid question, but have you had a looked under the hood at all? If it's a plasticy smell maybe you have oil leaking on the plastic covers under the hood and it's heating up and melting after the engine runs for a while. Maybe you've mistaken the plastic smell for rubber... have you looked at your belts.

Just a couple thoughts.

-cricket

This is probably the most stupid thing said on this forum but have you checked if there isn't any kind of trace of a cat giving birth to its kitties? Usually, although that being a wonderful moment of life it smells real bad

Well, the other day I smelled a weird smell, and with further inspection from under the hood, I had a gas leak, right on the line where it is about to enter the throttle body. I had to rig it so it wouldn't leak anymore. You might want to check to see it's not gas, my car also was in a wreak. You could be suprised how much stuff can damage from a small collision.