I recently bought my wife a 97 to use as a daily. Car has 66k on it and rides very well. Lately there has been a strange smell coming from the front passenger side wheel well, it smells like a burnt odor. Smell does not come up through the air vents when the air is turned on you only smell it outside. I did a visual inspection and there is no smoke , when i sniffed around close up the smell is coming from the strut area not brakes. Does anybody have any idea what it can be ? I opened the hood and no smoke , i did notice however that the power steering fluid may be leaking as the hoses are wet any possibility that its leaking down and burning off? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

man, im stumped with this one.....never heard of a burning smell coming from the struts before....could it be a bad bearing heating up???

 

Maybe take off that wheel and check the brakes. My front caliper went bad and heated up the rotor and I've heard that brakes/rotors can make odd smells when they overheat.

 

It's probably the power steering fluid as you suspected. Does gravity take that leak to some hot part of the car, like the exhaust or engine itself?

 

if you can, jack up both front wheels and see if one is harder to turn than the other. if one is, most likely the caliper is seized or something similar. seized calipers will heat up the brakes causing a gnarly smell

 

Better yet, if it is a seized caliper, then drive the car for around 20 minutes. When you stop, get out and touch each wheel. The wheel with the seized caliper will be much warmer than the rest. You'll know it when you feel it.

 

i can tell you that calipers don't give off any weird smells. if the caliper was sticking you'd see black dust all over your wheels and you'd smell brake pads burning up when your windows were down and when you stop after a bit of drivivng. i just did both front calipers as they were sticking and the pads were shot, i smelled pads all the time and my wheels were black almost every day from the calipers sticking. ended up doing lines and new fluid and cutting the rotors too.

 

i was gonna add that but i never, burnt my finger once on a car that had a dead seized caliper doing that