Burning smell when driving uphill?

[indexcow]

Hello everyone. For work I drive a 2013 honda civic CVT around a mountain region and when going uphill with CVT pinned @ 4k RPMs for a good moment while climbing a hill I get a burning plastic kind of smell and I always assumed it was the CVT getting toasty but dont really care since its the work car. Now I made the same trip in my 2016 Civic EX CVT and the same thing happened. Same hill climb and the same smell. Am I damaging these transmissions? Or is there another reason for that toasty smell when climbing these hills? Could the smell be from having the heater on while climbing these hills?

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[Bawb333]

How many miles are on it? You'll get burning smells in any car as they break in. They spray all kind of anti-corrosion stuff on the cars that burns when the components get warmer than usual, which is normal when you're going up big hills.
You can always have the dealer check it out if you're worried, but it's probably normal.

 

[Launchpad]

More than likely what you smell are the CVT belts slipping from the steep incline do a google search it s a common problem

 

[indexcow]

How many miles are on it? You'll get burning smells in any car as they break in. They spray all kind of anti-corrosion stuff on the cars that burns when the components get warmer than usual, which is normal when you're going up big hills.
You can always have the dealer check it out if you're worried, but it's probably normal.

@Bawb333 The '13 civic has 40k miles on it and my 16 civic has 12k miles on it and they both do the same thing.

 

[bubbaleenc]

Sorry to revive this old thread...

I too experienced this driving up steep mountain roads when I first got the car. In August I chucked it up to new car smell and temperatures in the high 70s.

But I just experienced this again on the same steep roads last week. The car has over 15,000 miles so most of the new car stink from the drivetrain should be long gone. The air temperature was about 30F.

I know that CVT belt slippage is somewhat common under significant loads (like coasting into a mountain hairpin then going 80% throttle out of the turn up a 25% grade). What I want to know is if anyone has experience in minimizing this effect. Otherwise I may just buy an extended drivetrain warranty to cover my 6 since I will be driving those roads pretty frequently.

 

[bubbaleenc]

As an aside, I once seriously hurt the feelings of a '95 Ford Taurus Vulcan V6 motor on the same roads as I noted above. Those engines were bullet proof if you kept oil in them (the tranny on the other hand sucked). I got almost to the top of the ridge when the engine just shut off while the car was moving. The coolant temp was fine, but the engine decided it didn't want to do the climb anymore! It wouldn't restart at first, but after about 10 minutes it started again - only to shut off at the very peak where I could coast it into a parking spot and leave it overnight. The next day it ran fine without any hint of a problem. This engine was Pre-OBD II so there was no record of what happened. I figure it was just the road - many cars can't make it up that hill!

 

[bubbaleenc]

Any chance it could simply be concomitant with the unusually hot exhaust system (due to higher than usual power being forced out of the engine) cooking the undercoating where the pipe goes from the engine to under the car?? Saw that possibility on another forum.

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