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livingwells · 05-12-2006, 01:28 PM

I have a 1999 Coachmnen Catalina with a Ford V-10 6.8L w/61K miles on it. For the past year, sometimes, not always, when climbing a pretty steep hill for more than 20 seconds or so, the coach cabin fills up with a stinky odor. (Best discribed as rotten stale air from inside a spare tire). It has a rubbery, slight anti-freeze smell to it. I have taken it to the Ford Truck dealership several times and of course can never duplicate the smell while the technician is onboard. There are no visable leaks of any kind. It does seems to coincide with the Radiator cooling Fan kicking into high speed while climbing hills. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.

livingwells · 05-12-2006, 01:28 PM

I have a 1999 Coachmnen Catalina with a Ford V-10 6.8L w/61K miles on it. For the past year, sometimes, not always, when climbing a pretty steep hill for more than 20 seconds or so, the coach cabin fills up with a stinky odor. (Best discribed as rotten stale air from inside a spare tire). It has a rubbery, slight anti-freeze smell to it. I have taken it to the Ford Truck dealership several times and of course can never duplicate the smell while the technician is onboard. There are no visable leaks of any kind. It does seems to coincide with the Radiator cooling Fan kicking into high speed while climbing hills. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.

SRT · 05-13-2006, 01:06 PM

Any vents or windows open? We've found out not to leave the bathroom vent open when traveling. Under certain conditions fumes can get sucked in. Sometimes running with the drivers window open causes the same problem. Now the only vent open is the front heater vent.

Retird2Golf · 05-14-2006, 01:34 PM

Sounds like "Old" anti-freeze to me.
I'd have the radiator drained and flushed.
Check the thermostat also, could be running a little hot. Hope this helps.

"Ride it like a Ford"

LVJ58 · 05-14-2006, 04:49 PM

Do you notice the coolant level getting lower in the reservoir? If so, might want to check the lower radiator hose clamp, Ford had a problem with leakage due to faulty hose clamps. Just a thought.

Izzyblueye · 05-15-2006, 04:10 AM

By all means check your hose clamps on a Ford chassis. They were defective and I had to replace all of mine. I would get that hot smell in the coach, until I found they were seeping, and I replaced them all. Some were broken, but you could not tell it. Also check your heater core, you may have developed a pin hole leak in it. Either case should show diminishing fluid level, albeit very gradual.

Kirk · 05-16-2006, 10:05 AM

I had my radiator hose replaced last year and at the time also converted to the screw type of hose clamps. The squeeze type just aren't very good.

Another source for that smell could be if you keep the resevoir too full coolant will go out the overflow when you climb and heat things up. I have found that if I keep the level up into the arrows on the indication it always does that. It will then drop down to about the bottom of the shown "cold fill" level.

ronboc · 05-21-2006, 01:17 PM

You're probably not going to like my answer....

I had a 2000 F53 chassis. At about 15-18k miles, it developed that same odd smell, like stale anti-freeze or similar. It started out as an infrequent intermittent occurrence (real hot day or pulling up a hill) and then gradually got worse and worse, til it was almost continuous and quite oppressive. I decided it had a leak in the heater radiator, so I replaced the core (even though I could find no leaks). That seemed to help a little but not much.

Then at about 50k miles, it cracked the right-side head. No warning, no hot-rodding it - I just started it one day and it boiled out tons of steam from the exhaust. $5000 later, the engine problems were fixed. About 1k miles later, my wife mentioned that the stinky smell was gone... and it was gone!

Never noticed it again.

Good luck,
Ron

livingwells · 07-20-2006, 12:49 PM

I have had the anti-freeze replaced and all hose clamps changed out. The smell is not as often but still there. Someone else recommended that I changed out all radiator hoses. They said they found out from Goodyear, who makes the hoses, that after a few years, the radiator hoses will emit the anti-freeze smell when they get hot. I guess I will try that next. Thanks for all your suggestions.

livingwells · 11-19-2006, 12:37 PM

Finally, The Fix!!!
Replaced the two original heater hoses. These were cheap soft rubber hoses that when under a lot of pressure (such as high rpm's while climbing a hill), antifreeze would permeate through the porous rubber and be evaporated on top of the hot engine. This produced the smell which would find it's way into the coach through the doghouse cover.

"007" · 11-19-2006, 02:24 PM

livingwells welcome to irv2

Thanks for your follow up its bound to help others also.

Enjoy the forums and post often.

full-timer · 11-20-2006, 06:42 AM

ivingwells ,yes we do thank you for coming back and giving us the answer that solved your problem. Too many times we do not know the "fix" for the problem when the rig is repaired.

Joe