stumped by intermittent strange smell!

OK, this has got me baffled. A couple of weeks ago I had a particularly aggressive regen. Ever since then I've noticed an intermittent odd smell, both in the cabin while driving, and in the garage after parking. To me it doesn't smell like fuel or exhaust, but who knows. It's kind of a sweet chemical smell. I've looked for evidence of exhaust or adblue leaks, and I've sniffed and poked around the engine bay, both from above and from below, as well as looked for leaks down the length of the exhaust, but everything looks and sounds normal, and their is no obvious place where the smell might be coming from. It's driving me nuts. The car is running great, and nothing shows up on VCDS. Please help!

How's your coolant level?

RIP TDI said:

How's your coolant level?

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Perfect. No fluid leaks anywhere.

Whenever I hear sweet smell I always think coolant. Have you taken a look around your heater core?

describe this "aggressive regen"?

did it just take longer with higher EGTs or you just notice the fans on high after shut down?

My car, as well as two more I looked at, has a coolant smell when hot. So far I have driven 8K miles and the level has remained constant and not a drop on the inside of the lower cover or on the ground. I have come to the conclusion that the smell comes from the reservoir vent.

740GLE said:

describe this "aggressive regen"?

did it just take longer with higher EGTs or you just notice the fans on high after shut down?

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Unfortunately I wasn't driving at the time. The knuckleheads from Safelite were bringing it back from the body shop to fix a scratch they put in my paint. To add to the fact that their paint job was terrible, the manager asks if I've had problems with my car. He tells me the car was revving like crazy and smoking (!!!) when they got back. And it smelled nasty. I was about to lose my mind, so we start it up, it was running fine, so I took it home. I checked for fault codes, and also checked to see when the last regen occurred. No codes, but a regen did happen while they were bringing it back. I still have no idea what really happened, but I'm guessing maybe water in the engine bay (it was a really rainy day) steamed up from the heat of the regen? That nasty smell has gotten a lot better, but I still notice it occasionally. Still no codes, and the car runs awesome.

I bought myself an erWin subscription for a day last week and downloaded everything I could think of and/or came across.

I have no idea if this applicable in your case, but this TSB ("HVAC unpleasant smell") might address it (?).

Nuje said:

I bought myself an erWin subscription for a day last week and downloaded everything I could think of and/or came across.

I have no idea if this applicable in your case, but this TSB ("HVAC unpleasant smell") might address it (?).

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Thanks for posting that TSB. That isn't my problem, but hopefully it'll help someone else who stumbles across this thread. My issue is definitely related to the regen (or whatever else might have happened while the car was out of my hands), but thankfully it's gotten fainter every day. I'll keep an eye (and nose) on everything, but I'm beginning to think I'll never really know what it was.

safelite.

There is the first red flag... Absolutely the worst company in the 'professional' car services realm.

15TDICommuter said:

safelite.

There is the first red flag... Absolutely the worst company in the 'professional' car services realm.

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You won't get an argument from me!!!

We've had very noxious air coming out of the vents a few times on cold starts when defrosting the windshield. I'm positive it's the electric auxiliary heater.

MTjake said:

We've had very noxious air coming out of the vents a few times on cold starts when defrosting the windshield. I'm positive it's the electric auxiliary heater.

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Electric Auxiliary heater?

?

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=493005