Fuel smell

[lightyears]

Ive just completed a 300 mile strip and my 850 has developed something of a fuel smell, very specifically the driver side, just behind the passenger door, I've had a look with a torch and can't see anything untoward, but is there something common I should be looking out for?its not burnt fuel and can only describer it as forecourt smell, I recall my D5 had a rubber seal around the pump that failed and that made a right old smell.

[Luxobarge]

Have a look up underneath behind the rear wheel arch, where the filler pipe meets the fuel tank there's a big rubber doughnut seal held together with a 2-part steel cup clamp. The outer part of that clamp is famous for rusting badly, yours might have rusted right through making the clamp ineffective and leading to fuel leaking out, especially with a full tank. It seems to tie in with the location of your smell, so well worth checking.

New clamps are available, I got mine from PFV, although a half-clamp (cheaper!) is available from PartsMonster and others. Usually it's only the outer half of the clamp that has rusted, so a half-clamp may well be all you need. The two halves are held together by two 10mm AF bolts, very easy to change once that corner is jacked up.

HTH

[lightyears]

Thanks for your reply, ive just jacked up the car and had a closer look and found a broken pipe on what I believe is called the rollover valve, which appears to be something to do with the evap system, my nose led my right to it mostly, I will check the other bits suggested though as they all look quite old.

[Seacombe2379]

Out of curiosity what fuel are you using?

E10 and old engines don't really mix

[lightyears]

I try to use E5, but have to admit ive been putting whatever comes up cheapest at the moment.

[Seacombe2379]

I know E10 is upto 10% ethanol doesn't mean it is 10% ironically the test I seen and you can do yourself using just water btw supermarket fuel was the worst for it at over 9% my XC90 when we bought it ran like **** untill we worked out it was cheap fuel runs shell now and never had a hesitation issue that the previous owner said it had or the egr fault.

Either way if you can pay for the good stuff it will pay it forward.

I work Forrestry and seen guys with old reliable saws all starting to fail cause of E10 and those on e5 super still going, it eats the **** out of the rubber,

It's ironic tho cause if you go e85+ you have a brilliant tuning fuel as long as you swap out the entire fuel system to support it 😂

[lightyears]

To further update my post, ive repaired the broken section with some 6.3mm fuel hose this morning, not only thicker than the Volvo boot, hopefully it will last longer.

On restart however my random misfire has returned, checked the leads, plugs and then today the distributor, ive found it looking like this




I can only assume that this is what causing the misfire, it's green, and very hard to remove from the contacts, have ordered a new one plus rota which is also very worn. The car is sitting on 118K atm and I suspect this is an original part.

[Luxobarge]

Originally Posted by lightyears

The car is sitting on 118K atm and I suspect this is an original part.

I'd agree with that. A common issue on many cars, because the dizzy cap and rotor have a limited life, and should really be a service item. However, replacement of them (or even checking them) never seems to feature on a service action list, so often it never gets done. I'd say that they should be checked at every service, and replaced every 50k miles or so, after all they're critical items and not expensive.

I bet yours runs a whole lot better after you've replaced them, and probably run more economically too.

Looks like it's starting to get a bit oily there too, mine was like that and eventually blew out the camshaft seal, before I did the PCV. Rear main crankshaft seal is not the only one that can blow if crankcase pressure gets too high, as I found out! Nothing wrong with the seal itself, I just pushed it back in and it's been fine since. Another one to keep an eye on.

[lightyears]

The oil, just for piece of mind was from a leaky cap and had flowed along the grove on the top of the cam cover , it was very dry under the cap itself

[4x4]

I'm surprised it ran with that distributor cap