I've often wondered, what's the fire smell you get out of cars after driving them hard?

My own doesn't do it but hire cars, courtesy cars, demo cars & pool cars all seem to do it (I guess because I drive them hardest), but what is the source of the smell.

Brake pads

Strangest thing about this is that your car shows no symptoms of this phenomina

The catalytic converter can smell quite bad when you push the car hard..!

Relevant to the title, but not to your query SteVRs, so apols for minor hijack. That fire smell on my old car - and very worrying it is - turned out to be a plastic bag which had moulded itself onto my undercarriage and was burning itself off. I try to avoid those flying carrier bags these days...

Regards

Mo

Strangest thing about this is that your car shows no symptoms of this phenomina

It has an easy life compared to the other ones....

the oil can smell pretty bad too when it gets really hot

My old BMW used to heat up the N/S rear tyre with the exhaust rear silencer when you caned it. Used to smell like burning rubber whenever I went to the boot.

The one worst smell in the world though is getting a plastic bag stuck to your CAT. It just burns and burns for ages and stinks to high heaven. Yuck. :(

The one worst smell in the world though is getting a plastic bag stuck to your CAT. It just burns and burns for ages and stinks to high heaven. Yuck. :(

that's how the mercedez dealer in portsmouth burnt down thier workshop.. something stuck to the cat..... nasty

its the way you drive them bro that superb is deffinatley the worst tho but at least it didn't go into limp mode that day like a certain octy .:rofl:

Hmmm.. Courtesty cars...No idea, but the clutches on the one's I've had... are always useless. Normally go within the first few days.

After doing some track day laps of Oulton Park , when i got back to the pits my car was smelling of fire ,

that was because the front brakes were on fire ,

had to drive round the paddock for 20 minutes to cool them down