Eggy smell from a diesel

[acealfa]

Hi all,

My sisters 1.7 DTI Corsa has a rotten egg smell coming through the air vents as soon as the car is started. I understand this is traditionally the cat failing but thought this only applied to petrol?

So far I've checked the usual things like pollen filter, washer bottle, battery is charging at 14v and seems ok.

Is it worth running some cleaner through?

[E-bmw]

The eggy smell you refer to as being from a cat is not due to failure, it is due to it working properly & would be from the exhaust under certain conditions, if you were smelling this from the air vents you would be in REAL trouble!

What you describe sounds like the air con condenser has bacterial growth in it and needs disinfecting.

There are diy products you can buy to disinfect it, or conversely any air con specialist can do a proper job of it.

[acealfa]

Thanks for the reply. It only seems to smell for a few seconds on start up then clears. If I turn on the recirc it doesn't smell so I'm thinking it's either battery or cat now.

Edited by acealfa on Thursday 7th January 18:21

[E-bmw]

The cat is not at fault as in not working, an eggy smell from a cat is correct, you do not need to change the cat, what may not be correct is how this gets into the vents..

If it is just at start up but is coming from the air vents it is either as I said above or it is coming in from the air intakes above the bonnet, if that is the case you need to be looking for exhaust leaks near the cat or recirc leaks from the emissions systems.

[acealfa]

Fixed! Turns out it was the washer bottle. Guess I didn't smell hard enough Lol. Gave me chance to clean out all leaves etc though.

[E-bmw]

So have you changed the cat yet?

[Mr2Mike]

E-bmw said:

The cat is not at fault as in not working, an eggy smell from a cat is correct,

The eggy smell come from fuels high in sulfur, and since modern fuels are supposed to be very low sulfur there shouldn't be any stinky catalytic converters around.

[E-bmw]

Mr2Mike said:

E-bmw said:

The cat is not at fault as in not working, an eggy smell from a cat is correct,

The eggy smell come from fuels high in sulfur, and since modern fuels are supposed to be very low sulfur there shouldn't be any stinky catalytic converters around.

M2M,

You are of course correct, but in a simplistic way, I was just trying to highlight that the cat was not faulty.