Putrid smell while getting un"stuck".
 

Good evening! (this is about a really bad smell, but I like to paint an accurate picture!) :)

So, I live in Michigan... in the last ~2 weeks we've had snow, rain, sleet, 60° temps melting snow, and freezing again. My car, parked in a dirt/gravel driveway... is fricken STUCK!!!

I don't drive it very often, especially in the winter, my tires aren't exactly all season (if they are, they suck in the snow!)... so my car has sat in ONE spot for the last ~2 weeks. In that time, about 3 inches of snow, mud, ice, and a combination of the 3... have more or less molded my tires into place. I didn't know that at first.

So I started my car and warmed it up while sweeping off my porch and doing other odd stuff... car only got up to about 130°F before I hopped in. I released the p-brake, I heard the ~thunk~ of the half-rusted/half-friction welded brakes letting go of the rotors, car shuffle oh so very lightly like it normally does.

Now, I'm backed into my parking spot with a very low curb about 4ft behind the back tires. I put the car in first (manual) and attempted to pull out slowly like I normally do... RPMs went up, car didn't move... which suggested to me I was going to have to rock it mildly, this wasn't the first time having to gently rock it this winter. (soft dirt when wet).

I put it in reverse, gradually gave it gas while riding the clutch a bit (as to not going slingshotting myself over the curb and into my yard lol), RPMs bogged down a bit, but the car finally got up out of the ruts. I mashed the brake really quick, put it neutral, put the P-brake on.... and all of the sudden I got this major whiff of this mod horrid disgusting ~someone buried a corpse under my car and lit it on fire~ kind of... rotten propane smelling odor.!!!

The clutch is about a year old, which didn't really "need" to be replaced but I bought the car used... so I didn't know what shape it was in. This didn't smell like that though... to me, a clutch smells like formaldehyde, cats smell like burnt peanut butter and burnt mud/dirt (if you've ever gone off-roading/mudding or ridden dirt bike/quads... you know the smell). This was more like the cheap propane I mistakenly used in my BBQ grill last summer, mixed with dead animal!

I stuck my face by the tail pipe... didn't smell anything abnormal there. I opened my trunk lid and lifted the carpet to smell around the battery, which is dang-near spotless and clean with no signs of leaking... nothing. I popped the hood, didn't see anything abnormal, nothing out of place other than a small portion of the foil-looking insulation hanging off the firewall (on the passenger side, about parallel to the belts), but it wasn't touching anything (like the manifold). No steam, no "check engine" light, nothing.

The clutch didn't feel like it was giving out, and as I mentioned it's fairly new (less than 1500 miles on it so far). Tires did break traction a little bit, but I don't see them making that kind of smell on ice and snow....

Does anyone have any idea what might smell that...putrid? No smoke, no steam, no puddles, nothing visible, nothing abnormal coming out of the pipe, ***BUT, I could smell it inside the car (through the vents) before I could smell it outside.

I turned the car off while I investigated, and the smell started to subside some. When i got back in and started it up, I had forgotten I had got the car out of the rut... like a dumb A I took off the p-brake, took my foot off the brake, and the car went ~PLOP~ right back into the rut! Ok, well, I tried creeping it out again, no go... it peeled out like it were on smooth solid ice.. to the point where I had to get the bucket of rock salt/cat litter mix out of the shed. (which is doing it's job as I type this).

While trying to get the car unstuck that second time around... the smell started to come back, but not nearly as quickly nor as strong as the first time.

TL;DR... what the H could make that smell, considering I can't smell it coming out of the tail pipe and the clutch has plenty of grab and no signs of slipping???

Sorry for the long post, I've read a few posts here and there about bad egg smells and odd sulfur odors...etc etc, and none of them sound ~similar~ in the sense that the situations were completely different. My car wasn't "hot", the battery seems fine, and I can't smell it coming out of the exhaust... so I figured I'd type out a very long & descriptive explanation of what happened. (Oh god, I hope a fricken mole or squirrel didn't chew through my air filter and climb up through the intake like a gerbil-trail tube thing... eeewwww... pureed in the SC?? BARF)

Oh, before I forget.. the car:

'06 SS/SC, mostly stock. 145k miles, runs better than my 2015 Wrangler (which has 17k baby miles on it). No fancy exhaust or performance upgrades, just a cheap A.F. cherry bomb in place of the "resonator". (Everywhere I took it they wanted me to sell my body on a street corner just to pay for the OEM resonator... so yeah... NOPE!)

Yes, I am the king of TMI, I have the gift of gab, a mouth like a .... well you get the idea! :p Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated, even if you're going to tell me something I've already ruled out!!!

You probably smoked your clutch a bit.

I agree, It was probably the clutch. Just because it smelled a bit does not mean it needs to be replaced. Just shift normally at 3k rpms and you will be fine.

Like the others said, probably the clutch.

Also, welcome

Frozen to the ground and burnt your clutch a bit.

That's a long ass post for such a simple answer lol

Sounds like a post from someone with high functioning aspergers syndrome.

Better than the typical first post's by most users.

Clutch eh.... well that stinks. har... har...

Hrmph. I was kinda thinking that... considering I couldn't smell anything out of the pipe, but that smell was new to me. As I mentioned, I've worn out my share of clutches over the years and they typically have always smelled like formaldehyde & hot metal... not corpse . Even the last clutch (the supposed original) smelled like I would expect it to. I know this doesn't mean I've need to go run out and replace or anything, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Some new composite material in these things now? (new, as in.. new to someone that's not exactly a gear head).

Either way, I did get it out this morning, the smell came back right after doing so... but not nearly as bad as last night. Took it for a drive, got on it a few times, but no smell then, no slipping or anything either.

The garage that replaced the clutch last year or whenever it was... didn't know what they were doing! I got it barely out of their parking lot and the clutch stopped working... had to push it back up to the door. Then... they didn't know how to bleed it... pedal kept getting all spongy and/or limp, took it back to them 3 times to re-bleed it! And to this day I STILL have a randomly limp clutch pedal when it gets hot. And the dealership? Yea, well... we've all had our experiences with those morons.... they coudn't figure out my check engine light was on because my tires were low... so there's that....

Lastly... yes, again, sorry for the long post. I was making sure I got all the angles covered :). (because as I said, it smelled different than I've come to expect).

Anywho, if the general consensus is clutch... so be it, I shall keep an eye on it but otherwise not worry about it.

Thank you all!

Clutch and brakes both have that sort of distinctive smell. I have done the same thing back when I was still learning how to drive I tried to get out of a ditch in the wrong gear. Producing that smell does not always necessarily mean you ruined your clutch though it definitely isn't good on it.

LMAO.. no, not aspergers. You're thinking in the right direction though! It also doesn't help that my oncologist has given me some... fancy.... deserts!!! Seriously though, I have a problem with talking about random things with people I don't know.... in my experience, if I just cut to the chase, someone always goes WELL off the beaten path and doesn't understand what I'm saying/asking. Over the years I've learned to be... specific...detailed... a*al retentive if you will. It leaves less room for interpretation that way. ;)

And I'm obviously not a gear head.

This is something that is ok once or twice but if you are smelling that every-time you back up the driveway you should either turn around and drive forward or back up faster so you can fully release the clutch because this will drastically shorten the life of your clutch. Definitely not something you want to do daily or even monthly.

You need to either be on or off the clutch. There really is no excuse to slip it that much. Drive up your driveway in 1st and back down it. Also in the snow, just let the clutch out, brake, shift to r, then let it out again to rock it, don't just slip the shit out of it because you're going to destroy it.

Sounds like you glazed the crap out of it. Drive for 250 miles and don't shift at anything lower than 3000 rpm. It should come back.