Lexus Repair: Burning smell, toyota tercel 1995, toyota tercel

Question
Hi Leonard,
I know you are an expert in Lexus repair but I have a problem with my toyota tercel 1995 and thought maybe you'd know what it is.

Every time I drive the car, there's a burning smell. It comes from the back of the car on the right hand side.. It's stronger in the trunk. I took the car in to the toyota and they took a look at the brakes and cleamned them and said everything is fine but I still find that burning smell wehn I drive.

Do you know what it could be.  (It sort of smells like burning cable)

Thanks in advance,

Alicia

Answer
Alicia,

Thanks for the question.

Based on your description, This is obviously not a smell that one would consider normal.

A great place to start would be by checking into any aftermarket stuff that was put on the vehicle.  If so, it may be wired incorrectly, or installed poorly so that it touches the exhaust, or rubs on a tire, etc.  This situation is more likely if the smell only occurs after the engine has run long enough to get the exhaust good and hot.

Other than the above situation, you will probably have to have to find a truly qualified technician to take a look.  In order to get some attention, it may be worth offering the technician to pay for an hour or so of diagnosis time, to make it worth his while to really check it out properly.

I'm sorry I can't offer anything more specific, but there are more than a few possible sources for the smell.  However, a good technician should be able to pinpoint the problem in relatively short order.

One last thought:  Make sure you do whatever it takes to get the smell the strongest so that the technician can inspect it while the problem is happening.  The better that they can duplicate it, the quicker and less expensive it will be to locate and resolve the problem.

Hope that helps.

Leonard