Starting about November 2005, my wife and I began noticing a strong gasoline odor, inside and outside of our trusty 2000 Outback Wagon - 136,000 miles, automatic tranny, 2.5 L engine. (Note: The fuel filter was replaced, once by me at about 120,000 miles, and once by Subie in conjunction with an alledged "tank of bad gasoline" last summer.) The gas smell went away in December and we were happy. A long road trip, from Denver, CO to Buffalo, NY and back was uneventful. A few days after returning to Denver on Jan 1, the smell came back. In a few days it was gone again. It's come and gone again twice more since then, and it's BAAAAAACK.

 

I've seen some threads in the NASIOC forums about a leaking gas line in the engine compartment of Imprezas, especially in spells of cold weather, but I don't know if this would be the same issue in my Outback, especially since many of the posters were WRX drivers (2.0 L engine until recently...)

 

Any ideas or history out there as to how to troubleshoot this?

 

Regards!

Here's one link from a while ago when our MY01 Outback had a similar issue:

 

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11897