heater on, acrid smell emitting?

[dwh]

our bug emits an ungodly smell with the heater on. this cannot be good but identifying the source is difficult. not an exhaust smell but a caustic, lung wrenching whif when we stop. hope someone has a thought. thanks

[scott66bug]

I would certainly check the heater duct by the battery...could be nasty battery acid overflow burning

[TheBilgeRat]

our bug emits an ungodly smell with the heater on. this cannot be good but identifying the source is difficult. not an exhaust smell but a caustic, lung wrenching whif when we stop. hope someone has a thought. thanks

I'll tell a (not-so) funny story of a young man and his 1972 Type 2 he left parked next to a bag of dog food for a couple of months. This same gent decided to haul some of his buddies into town to see "Heavy Metal" on the big screen. Jumped in, fired it up and cruised down the I-5. About 10 minutes into the drive we began to smell an awful awful smell. Come to find out, some field mice had decided that the heater boxes would make a great nest and had dragged much of the dog food with them. I never got that smell out of that bus.

[rokemester]

My car warms up pretty well in the cold weather, but I also get a smell, kind of like a light essence of exhaust and fuel. I figured it comes with the territory of a heating system that uses engine heat from the exhaust manifolds to heat the car. I figure if I was to drive a few hours straight somewhere with the heat full blast I would have a pretty good Bug buzz going

[jmartini]

You should be carefull though, if there is a hole in the heat exchanger it could bring exhaust into the car. I know when I had my engine out the mechanic found a spot he was concerned about and patched it.

[snicrep]

turned on my heater in a type 2 i used to own and soon had a fog of exhuast gases floating around. turned out my heat exchanger were like swiss cheese. could have been disatrous.

[Blue Baron]

I'm with TheBilgeRat. Sounds like something crawled into one of the heat exchangers and died. Remove the heat exchanger and blow it out with compressed air. (It can be done on the car, but I wouldn't recommend it.)