1995 BMW 740i Fix for Gas Smell

If you get into your car after it has been sitting over night and have a strong gas smell, this could be an easy fix for you.
First check under the car and make sure there are no gas leaks on the ground. This fix is for fuel vapors and not fuel leaks.
If you have no leaks then it could be the fuel evaporative emission system causing the smell. It can be caused by a bad carbon canister but that was not the case for me.

My symptom was a strong fuel smell and an intermittent gurgling sound coming from the back of the car when you shut the engine off.
There were no fuel leaks anywhere.
At first I thought it might be my fuel vent pipe being clogged. But the symptoms for that are actually different (colapsed fuel tank and hissing when you remove the gas cap). I did not have those symptoms but was curious about that vent pipe being clogged, so I went looking for it.
The vent pipe was not clogged, but I discovered that another metal fuel pipe near it was badly crimped flat.
This can happen if you ever bottom your car out on a curb or your auto shop puts your car on a hydraulic lift and puts the jack points in the wrong place.
This fuel pipe is exposed under the car and has no protection from those situations.
I guess the BMW engineers figured that the pipe did not need to be protected because it just carries fuel vapors instead of fuel?

My crimped fuel pipe is the pipe that runs from the carbon canister to the fuel breather valve mounted at the front of the engine.
I used a vice grip to gently squeeze the pipe back into a round form.
Now I have NO MORE GAS SMELL.
To find this fuel pipe, Jack the car up at the drivers side rear wheel and look upwards a little towards the front of the car from where the jack point is. (See my photos below).

Note that I was not getting any error codes detected with my Peake tool.
Evidently, the crimped pipe was not crimped enough to make the fuel breather valve fail completely. But it was bad enough to cause problems.

 

Rich Love
www.carnationsoftware.com
richlove@carnationsoftware.com