gas fumes

[codman]

theres pressure in the tank when i remove the stopper....can smell fumes from 10 feet all the time...but no gas dripping...can anyone relate to this?

[8695Beaters]

How old is the car? Where do you live? Mileage? We need some detail here.

If you have a car that is closing in 20 years and it lives anywhere that gets salted in the winter, then my guess is your car is suffering from the same problem my Integra did: leaky fuel tank. After 20 years, all the road salt had slowly eaten through the top of my gas tank and made a bunch of tiny pin-hole leaks in the top of the tank (I found this out when I went to get the car inspected and the tank didn't hold pressure). The easiest thing to do at that point is to replace the tank. That's about $200. I used fiberglass resin so seal it up. It passed inspection, but barely. I could smell gas when the car was tilted or had just been driving.

The other thing it could be is the fuel line. Fuel lines are rubber reinforced with steel wire. Eventually the wire will rust and the line will leak. This also happened to my Integra, at about 15 years. The shop spliced in a new section of line (I also think that more of the line was leaking during inspection).

Anyway, what you have to do is take your car to a shop. This you can't avoid. And don't go to a dealership, they can't help you. Tell the shop you have a vapor leak in the fuel system. They will hook your car up to a smoke machine and they will look for where the smoke is escaping. That will tell you what needs to be fixed.

[codman]

thanks...its a 96 accord in haliax with 240k

[8695Beaters]

Get it smoke tested. Probably something like that. The other thing you can do is try to figure out which side the gas is coming from. Front, back, left, right. The fumes will be stronger where the leak is. That will also help your diagnosis.