I was beatin on the car a little bit today: I did some donuts in the snow, but nothing that bad. There was a slight odor afterwards it smelled a little bit like Sulfur, one of my friends said it was transmission fluid. When shifting through the gears there is sometimes a slight hesitation through the power band. In other words, the rpm increase isn't completely smooth. As the rpm needle moves, its a little rough or jumpy at times. The CEL just came on. Just wanted to see if anybody knew what this was, or has had problems like this in the past...

If your car has high mileage (say 75k+) then I would bet it is the catalytic converter heating up enough to burn off stuff inside the pipes.

Edit: if the revs jump up and then the transmission slows it back down, then it would be a slipping clutch.

I'd guess clutch. How many miles is on your car? Did you buy the car new? What's your driving style?

-Charles-

I was beatin on the car a little bit today: I did some donuts in the snow, but nothing that bad. There was a slight odor afterwards it smelled a little bit like Sulfur, one of my friends said it was transmission fluid. When shifting through the gears there is sometimes a slight hesitation through the power band. In other words, the rpm increase isn't completely smooth. As the rpm needle moves, its a little rough or jumpy at times. The CEL just came on. Just wanted to see if anybody knew what this was, or has had problems like this in the past...


Get the code scanned and post it EXACTLY, by the number...ie...Pxxx and we can possibly help.

Yeah, the smell is just the exhaust getting hot. As far as the hesitation goes, you just stirred up all the crap in the bottom of your gas tank doing donuts. You're now sucking it into the engine. I'd put some Heet or some other sort of dry gas product in there. Maybe some fuel system cleaner, too.

I bought my car used with 42,000 miles, right now it has 62,000 miles and I don't really drive it that hard. Every once in a while I'll redline, but usually I shift between 2,000 and 3,000 rpm. On Sunday I started the car and the CEL was on, but I drove it and things seemed fine. Monday, I drove it again and the CEL was off. So right now I really don't know what that was all about...