Hey all,
I've got a 2011 Mazda 6 with the 2.5L engine and ~110k miles. Whenever I start the car cold and step out, I can smell gasoline, as well as seeing black sludge on the bottom of the exhaust tips (exactly like this picture). Is this normal, or is this something I should worry about?
Thank you in advance
Possible to provide more info? Has the car been recently repaired? Did this problem just occur? Black sludge is kinda whatever but smelling gas is not. Is it only when the car is at a cold start? Are there any DTC's? These will help eliminate other problems as there could be a multitude of potential issues if not. Eg: overfilling your gas tank, gas cap is bad, evap is flooded for whatever reason. Could even come from the engine if stuff isn't torqued down correctly after a recent repair.
No, the car has not been recently repaired.
I noticed the problem last week, but didn't think anything of it.
I only smell the gas on cold starts, yes.
There are no tripped trouble codes.
I know that the 2014ish years had a lot of problems pertaining to the evap system of your car. Not to sure if it be the same generation or not though. Other than that your car just could just be getting old. Excessive fuel left in the tail pipe happens cause the catalytic converters are not warmed up yet therefore unable to burn the extra fuel as modern engines tend to run richer on cold starts. Try set A/C to recirculating mode to see if it reduces the smell the night before. If the smell is reduced, then you got nothing o worry about. If it doesn't I would get the car checked out just in case.
Just went for a long drive, no smell of gas once the engine warmed up. I believe it may be the cats needing to warm up, since my car is the generation before the 2014 model. I believe this may be correlated with the fact that the engine idles higher when cold (exclusively in park)