[kingspoons]

Hi all,

Was hoping the forum could potentially point me in the right direction regarding an issue we've been having with our 214 ('92), and a slight smell of fuel.

It's not there all the time (if the car isn't used for a few days in the garage, there's no obvious smell/build up of the smell) it's pretty slight, and it seems to be worse/more obvious after a slightly longer drive. It's coming from the same side as the fuel cap, but having examined the filler pipes, and the petrol/return pipes today, I can't see anything obviously wrong.

The other thing that's puzzled us is that removing the petrol cap now causes quite a dramatic WHOOSH as it has a sharp intake of air. The cap has always done this to an extent, but this is much, much more dramatic a noise than before - and without the car having been used much in between releases, either.

I'm a bit confused, as I've read the seam can go on the tank, but then I can't see how I could still have a vacuum, as indicated by the whoosh of air when I take the petrol cap off. Same with the filler/breather pipe - any hole there would presumably not allow there to be a vacuum.

Our first thought was it might be the return pipe, but as mentioned, it all looks OK visually, although unless there's petrol actively dripping out of it I'm not really sure how you could tell.

Either way, I just wanted to ask in case anyone had experienced anything similar, or could possibly point us towards the likeliest cause!

[g259fsg]

I've had similar problems with our 1990 214. Petrol smells from the area of the filler pipe. I agree with you, if you have pressure in the tank, either negative or positive, it surely indicates there isn't a major leak anywhere. The petrol tank does have some breather valves on the top of it, only visible if you lower the tank. I don't know if these have ever been changed on your car. Sometimes they make a moaning sound when they operate to relieve pressure. Normally the tank would have a slight vacuum as the engine uses the fuel, and this is released by the valves.

The two reasons I've had for petrol smells are corrosion on the filler and breather combo going to the filler cap, and leakage on the tank near the seam. The breather tube had quite bad corrosion which was visible once I removed the wheel arch liner. I replaced it with a length of breather hose - no more corrosion from that one. Fortunately the filler tube was in tact but rather rusty so I repaired and treated that.

The petrol tank is vulnerable round the seam joining the upper and lower halves. The problem is that the upper side of this seam can only be seen and repaired with the tank lowered. I put a new tank on around 2003 and repaired it again around 2019, there was a tiny pinhole which oozed petrol. It doesn't take much to create a smell. It would be too small to release the air pressure in the tank.

Has the tank ever been replaced on your car? Have you inspected it for corrosion? You might need to lower it to see.

Hope that helps,

Hugh