Hi all,

I have an issue but not sure what's causing it 

I always have my heating on with air blowing to the screen and my feet. A few weeks ago a smell that I can only describe as a dead mouse / egg / manure started to fill the cabin on a sporadic basis.

I took the car in for the dealer to have a look and just my luck, the smell stopped a couple of days before it was booked in. They still had a look at it and found no dead rodent buried in the heating system and everything was working as it should.

That was Saturday and today the smell returned! The service department is closed until the New Year so I have to put up with this horrible pong for at least a fortnight until I can take it back for further investigation.

A friend of mine told me it could be the catalytic converter - could it be? If so, what needs to be done to it?

Mine's an A500 with 10k covered.

Wouldnt have fault it was an exhaust/cat issue unless something had crawed up into the exhaust and then died but I would have thought you would have smelt that from the outside and it would have been all the time.

Open the bonnet and have a good hard look around the black trim around the base of he window and make sure nothing is there if it seems clear, like suggested, run the car on cold maybe even run the AC for a little while then try the heater. If the smell is there on normal cold and with the AC running then there is def something in the vents somewhere, but if its only on hot then Id suggest going back to the dealership in the new year and say you've run it hot and cold also with the AC running and its still there and ask em to look abit deep into the issue.

Good luck

Hmmmm, Id agree with that if you had been ragging it havent really experienced it with the Abarth but where my Alfa 156 is running a open cone filter is decated and has straight through pipework to the back box it runs quite rich and if Ive been driving hard (Never to the redline tho) it really really smells horrible, like somethings really wrong horrible but never that bad inside.

Maybe if the cars been pottering around town and in traffic alot and then given a blast say at the end of the week I could entertain the thought behind that. Does the smell start as the car starts to warm up and get worse as the car comes upto operating temp?

Really weird...

Maybe worth checking all the carpets around the sills just incase of water peneration, I remember going to a new years party and having to sleep in the car as the house was full, a mate took the passanger seat (No sniggering, behave yourselves! lol) and for months afterwards it smelt like something had died in the car.

Took me months to find what it was, and funny enough that seemed to come and go, turn out to be a drinks bottle that had rolled under the seat and had spilt, the water/drink had turned, gone off whatever happens to water, stagnent?, and it stunk, only found out when I removed the seat for something, got a hair dryer on it with some carpet cleaner and it went away.

Sometimes it can be something really silly or simple, you just gota find the cause.

UPDATE:

Checked battery for leaks: Fine.

Checked air filter for dead rodents: Fine.

Called dealer and discussed possibility of a problem with the cat converter: Fine (although it hasn't been looked at).

So, what next? The smell is actually changing, it's a bit like te smell you get from a hoover bag now. Could it be some kind of heating filter / matrix that's gone wrong?

Whatever it is, it's back to the dealers in the New Year 

Thats a possibility, the pollen filter should be changed every year on the A500.

There are some little vents in the boot that help circulate the air so i wouldn't be surprised if you smell it from the boot 

Finally got the smell problem sorted (I hope)!

Took it to the dealer for the second time and they discovered the tube that carried my rear wash fluid had split and the stuff soaked up in the boot liner and along the inside of the boot too. This was replaced and so was the boot liner. The smell is going away gradually.

They cleaned my rear brakes, replaced my driver's side door seal and washed the car which was nice.

I also had some paint flaking away on the bonnet around the Abarth badge. They touched it up but it's coming away again. I assume I'm well within my rights to ask them to replace the bonnet this time?