JK burning smell

mikeswillys

New member
I have a 2014 wrangler with 84k miles today I unzipped the back window rolled it up and took it for a ride. After getting on the highway going 60mph I started smelling a burning smell sort of like rubber. 600 miles ago I had the transmission filter replaced and flushed and also the rear differential and transfer case drained and replaced. 5 miles into the ride I decided to pull over and investigate. I crawled up under and started smelling around and couldn’t find anything. I checked the fluid in my transmission and transfer case and both are full. Opened the hood and had my wife hold the engine at 2500rpm and sniffed everywhere to see if I could locate the issue with no luck. I thought maybe an idler pulley had seized and was causing the serpentine belt to smell. Finding nothing I decided to keep going. I drove 50 miles smelling it occasionally. Stopped at a rest stop crawled under it again felt the rotors to see if they were hot and again could find no issue or smell it while it was stopped. I closed my rear window and haven’t smelled it since. So here I am seeing if I can bounce this info around and possibly see if anyone has experienced this and what it could possibly be.


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maybe something that got on the rotors or exhaust ??

3 of the calipers on my 2010 jk died around the 60k mark [over a 6 month period] but the smell they emitted was closer to a clutch smell than rubber. You could feel the heat on the rim.
 
I replaced both front brakes and rotors at 80k miles. The rear brake pads still had about 3/4 pad on both side but they were wearing down the rotors. The weird part is I could drive down the highway and smell it, stop at a rest stop and jump out snd not be able to smell it anymore. I will take the wheels off today and see if I see anything. What’s the sign of a bad caliper? I drove this Jeep across country towing a trailer with brakes. I thought by the 80k mark they would have been worn out.


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Opening just the rear window draws all the smells in including exhaust gasses. Is your exhaust running close to something rubber like tires gas lines or vent tubes?



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What’s the sign of a bad caliper?

On other vehicles I owned it showed up either by uneven brake pad wear or pulling to one side while breaking. A jk is less likely to pull to one side because the brakes aren't tied side to side but rather one front and the opposing rear. Before pad wear was great enough to notice I noticed the brake heat [and smell] coming from the affected wheel. It can also hurt gas mileage.
 
So I spent a couple hours messing with my Jeep the other day. Found a small amount of fluid leaking out of the fill hole in the transfer case. Put some Teflon tape on the threads to keep it from coming out when it gets hot. Day 2 and no smell. I guess that small amount of fluid that wasn’t pooling to notice was being slung back onto my muffler. I will give an update later when I’m sure this was the problem. Thanks for all the input.


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