NJTSXMan

Today I noticed a really really strong burning odor in the cabin of my car with the heat on. It was like an obvious plastic burning smell. I thought something was f-ed up with the heater so I turned it off. The smell kept coming back everytime I turned the heat on...then when i opened the car door, I could really smell the plastic burning odor. It is really strong. When I got home tonight, I smelled around the car and it seems to be coming from the bottom of the car more towards the rear i believe.

Any ideas what it could be? The car runs fine otherwise. I thought that maybe a plastic bag got caught on the pipe and is melting on it.. but i couldn't really see when i looked under the car for a brief moment. I guess i'll take it to meineke or something so they can put it on a lift and see what's going on.

jlukja

the plastic bag would have been my first guess. Jack it up and take a closer look all the way from the header to the exhaust tips.

NJTSXMan

I took the car to firestone and had them take a look. Apparently, a plastic (saran wrap type) bag was caught on the exhaust pipe where it splits off to the mufflers. You can see that it has melted heavily on the pipe and they pulled the unburnt portion off... however, they said they couldn't do anything with the residue already on the exhaust. They just told me I had to wait for it to all burn off... but the darn thing stinks so bad. How long does it take to completely burn off? Thanks.

Audioserf

Well, now, that's going to depend how much you drive isn't it? I'd take a nice long drive on some backroads or something until it stops smelling.

This happened once when I was a kid. My mom got a bag stuck under the Subaru and was shitting bricks because she thought the car was dying. lol