as soon as i crank up my car i get an immediate exhaust smell took it to the muffler shop and they put a exhaust manifold gasket on, took it back then they said its like that because of no cat converter which i know is not true atleast not what im smelling so i raised the hood today and reved up the engine on the carb and so some smoke come from where the exhaust manifold is im guessing thats the problem but im not sure? its gets so bad it will have your eyes burning and head hurting
if you can physically see smoke coming from the manifold gasket?.. then it's pretty safe to assume that is where the smell is coming from. As Jeff already said above though.. you can usually hear it before you can see it.. so be sure that's the issue first as you may simply have a warped/cracked manifold and a new gasket usually won't set you straight without fixing the underlying issue. Is this a V8 or 6?
I always used to put some trans fluid down the carb and watch for the smoke.Your neighbors might not like it though.
if it is an exhaust leak then do the listening with a hose trick. you will here the leak very clearly this way. so if you get a it think there is some noise then most likely thats not a leak. the noise usually sounds similar to the sound of blowing a raspberry with your tongue. if your valve cover gaskets are leaking oil on to the manifold that will smoke and smell bad also. i would hope an exhaust shop would be good enough to recognized the difference between and exhaust leak and oil burning on the manifold. it would have to be a really bad leak to overwhelm the interior of the car so fast. do you have your exhaust running all the way out the back of the car or dumping under the car?
is there any chance that its a strong gas smell? i can see gas causing that fast of smell in the car. exhaust is usually more subtle.
might be a leaking gas line squirting on the manifold or pipe since the original gas line comes out of the shock tower
Old cars smell, there was a 70 Mach, about 4 cars up from us today, and my apprentice asked what that smell was....