Having a large diesel powered engine doesn’t mean you have to constantly smell the fumes of the big motor, you can easily get rid of those smells, as well as gain some extra horsepower and torque that you may not have ever considered actually being untapped inside of your motor. For a few simple bolt on modifications that are going to help you calm down the smell, and overall sound of a diesel power house, you are going to want to take a look at the air filter, headers, and the exhaust. The headers and exhaust can really be considered one system, but for this article we are going to consider them two different modifications. If they need to be replaced, they will all add up to causing your vehicle to smell more like a diesel power plant instead of a smooth running engine.
Replacing the headers is going to be your first shot at fixing the exhaust leaks, and the main reason why you smell diesel fumes inside the cab of the vehicle. When you are going down the road, the wind is pushing those spent exhaust fumes back towards the cab because of the small leaks around either the heads of the engine, or the exhaust pipe brackets. Either way, replacing them is going to be the first step in fixing the fumes problem.
Next is replacing the worn out exhaust piping system for your diesel powered vehicle. If the system is more than a few years old, you may want to have it checked for any leaks. These will allow spent fumes to rise up into the cab while you are sitting still, giving you the constant smell of diesel fuel. These two mods aren’t expensive to buy the parts, and can be easily replaced in a day by almost anybody.
The last thing you need to check is the air filter. If you have a dirty air filter, then you aren’t allowing the engine to properly mix the air and fuel, and the combustion isn’t happening as hot as it should. Your engine isn’t burning off all of the fuel because you have a bad air filter, and if you change it out, you will be guaranteed to smell less fuel fumes, because the engine is going to be using more of the diesel to put power to the ground, instead of leaking fumes into your cab.