I am a new owner of a Protege 5 (vivid yellow).

Has anyone noticed a rotten egg smell coming
from their ehaust. Is it just my car or is this
a wide spread problem with other Mazdas?

 

I'm pretty sure what you are smelling is completely normal for a new car. It is just burning off excess crud in the cat converter. It should go away with some driving.

Dustin

 

I agree.

Also, if you bought the applied rust protection from your Mazda dealer than the smell would be coming from the rust protection burning off your muffler, etc.

 

The sulfur smell is normal (so they say) for new cars as it is from the chemical reaction in the catalytic converter. As the car has more miles on it the smell will go away (I have read that it is about 2000 miles for a cat to be "broken in").

From other things I have read if you run your engine lean for a while the sulfur from the gasoline will have stored itself in the catalytic converter in the form of sulphur trioxide. Then, when you stomp on the gas and allow the engine to run richer, it is released in the form of hydrogen sulphide (which is what smells that way).

If the smell persists after a few thousand miles then it might indicate a problem with the catalytic converter. Give it a little time.

here are some references:

http://www.seniority.co.uk/content/a..._converter.htm
http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/databas...l/t00084d.html
http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h64.pdf


--JJB--


PS. this is one reason why you can never run leaded fuel in a vehicle with a catalytic converter. The lead in the fuel totally screws up the chemical reaction and actually binds itself to the ceramic in the converter. What results then is a useless converter that puts out a horrible smell.