Losing the fuel smell

[Mike DC]

    
The air in the cabin (the air that is designed to be there) gets sucked in from the cowl inlet . . . which is right near the top of the engine.  That can't be helping anything.

 




I have sometimes wondered if it would help to try to seal off the cabin from the trunk area.  Not only for the exhaust/fuel smell but also just for general climate-control insulation help.

Block the big opening behind the rear seatback, and underneath the rear parcel shelf, and the openings into the roof structure under the C-pillars, and then inside the quarter panels above the outer wheelwells.  I would think it would help isolate the cabin area with all that stuff closed off.

[greenpigs]

Are you sure your getting a good spark at the spark plug?

[Dino]

at the very least i would crawl under there and inspect the rubber line from the sender to the hard line. i would also check out the rubber from the tank line to the fuel pump. they get soft and mushy over the years. im not going to say you should replace the hard line unless you are pulling brown fuel from the tank. i had a super nasty tank full of rust. i only replaced the tank and to this day im using the hard line. definitely check all your body plugs while you are under there, there are a lot of them.

I did take a quick look at the hard line when I was under there doing something...and as far as I remember it looked pretty good.  I'll definitely replace any rubber that's been in there 40+ years! 

I wonder if the tank venting shouldn't be redisgned anyway?  I get tired of having to be careful not to create a gas fountian at the pump and I'd like to find a way to fix that issue.

I think you're smelling fuel from the carb.  I've never had my Mopars do it, but my '66 Pontiac reeks of fuel after running it at WOT for 5-10 seconds.  The smell is definitely not coming from the exhaust, it's originating from the engine compartment.  Check what others have mentioned... float level, mixture, etc.

   

   
The air in the cabin (the air that is designed to be there) gets sucked in from the cowl inlet . . . which is right near the top of the engine.  That can't be helping anything.

 




I have sometimes wondered if it would help to try to seal off the cabin from the trunk area.  Not only for the exhaust/fuel smell but also just for general climate-control insulation help.

Block the big opening behind the rear seatback, and underneath the rear parcel shelf, and the openings into the roof structure under the C-pillars, and then inside the quarter panels above the outer wheelwells.  I would think it would help isolate the cabin area with all that stuff closed off.

Fuel coming from the carb and flying straight in huh?  Okay that's just plain dumb, how can we fix that?

You know I've been thinking about insulating the Charger as a modern car would be but I had not thought of blocking anything past the wheel wells, that's a damn good idea.  We have some sort of dense foam at work that we use to carve and shape body braces. (human body that is)  I wonder if I can shape it so it fits snug in the quarters.  It's too soft to ever move the quarter skin but it's dense enough that it'll block noise and fumes easily.  I'll have to read the msd on Monday and see if this stuff is flammable.

Are you sure your getting a good spark at the spark plug?

Seeing that it runs so nice and the plugs looked good my guess would be yes...but I'm not sure what else to look for.  What are the signs of a bad spark?

[greenpigs]

Wet plugs & a raw gas smell coming out the tailpipe are some.

Have you pulled a wire stuck a plug in and cranked it over in the dark? It should be a bright blue as you know.

It may run good but perhaps that 440 has even more than what you think. You should never smell raw gas at the tailpipes AFTER it has warmed up to operating temp IMO. If you got some nasty lumpy cam then you will have some unburnt gas but your ride is a mild build if I remember right.

[Mike DC]

              

You know I've been thinking about insulating the Charger as a modern car would be but I had not thought of blocking anything past the wheel wells, that's a damn good idea.  We have some sort of dense foam at work that we use to carve and shape body braces. (human body that is)  I wonder if I can shape it so it fits snug in the quarters.  It's too soft to ever move the quarter skin but it's dense enough that it'll block noise and fumes easily.  I'll have to read the msd on Monday and see if this stuff is flammable.

For this, I was picturing something like the big sheetmetal splash shields that fit behind the front wheels.  The big pieces that bolt onto the outer edges of the firewall and continue out to behind the fender skin.  Basically a sheetmetal piece, with a rubber edge maybe an inch wide to seal against the inside of the fender skin.  


I'm not sure what to do about underneath the C-pillars and the general area between the outer wheelhousings and the parcel shelf.  I wonder if moisture condensation would pose an issue if you foamed up the passages into the roof structure underneath the C-pillars.  

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I got the whole idea from dirt track muscle cars I've seen built in decades past.  Sometimes they would put up a metal firewall at the backseat, and basically just not close up the trunk area at all.  They would fasten the fuel cell to the rear rails of the frame and there might not be any trunkfoor.   It would have made bodywork a helluva lot easier when the cars got crunched in back because the rear end could have been treated not much different from the front in that regard.  A hit on the quarters or rearend would have been less likely to distort the rest of the body and probably be more easily fixed. 


I was daydreaming about if the rear half of the car was built like the front - bolted-on quarters, with the trunk area unsealed past the firewall.  No worries about rusty trunkfloors, less worry about the whole car body getting screwed up from a collision anywhere behind the doors, etc.   

[Dino]

Would it help to install a vapor separator and return line?  My car left the factory with a 318 but now has a 440.  PO never changed the lines though so should I upgrade to R/T fuel lines?  The separators are on ebay for less than $50.