i have a Z but the other car is a 2000 cavalier...this morning im driving to school in teh cavalier, i am at a red light i look down at the gauges and all of a sudden from being in the center the arrow on the engine temp. jumps up to the top.. i got to school a few minutes later and i could smell something burning....i let the car warm up and everything before i left and im just confused why that would happen????? any ideas

 

Radiator leak? Any suspiscious puddles underneath your car?

 

i just parked it went up to the front smelled it and left..i was already late, dont have a parking spot parked in visitors so i left before any of the workers at the school saw me standing next to it so i didnt have time to look around, i'll check after school...all i can tell you now is it smelled a little like something was burning

 

Something similar happened to me about two weeks ago. I smelled this awful smell coming from the car. Smelled like burning rubber or plastic. Horrible smell !!
Turns out a plastic bag got stuck to the exhaust pipe under the car and since it gets realy hot it was slowly burning and causing this burning smell !

The funny thing is that since I was due for an oil change, i took the car to the dealer (Esserman Nissan in Miami ). I told the service advisor that there is a plastic bag stuck under the car and since it's right in the middle I can't reach it. I asked if they could pull it off when they have the car on the lift. He said " sure, that will be $ 95 "
I thought he was joking but he was serious, 95 dollars to pull a piece of plastic bag off the car !!!
So i said to him to forget about it. On top of that those idiots overfilled my car by a quarter, they put 6 quarts of oil in !!!
I had to put the car on the ramps the next day to let a quart out. At the same time i pulled off the piece of the bag, took about 30 seconds, not bad for $ 95 ! After that, no more burning smell .....

 

Check to see if you have any fluid leaking under the car. If it's not a radiator leak, it is very possible that it is just your thermostat. I had that same thing happen to me twice already in my previous cars.

 

There is no way that guy could've really wanted $95 to pull that bag off of your car. He is an a$$hat.

 

lol, yea he said that was a "standard fee" for something like this !!
Don't think I will be going back anytime soon. Too bad for them since wife is looking for a new car and we were gonna checkout the XTerra there but after this i will just go somewhere else.

 

$95 should of asked him if the secretary came with that deal.

 

this happened to my in my jeep once. turns out my coolant cap wasnt on tight and fell off and my coolant came out, car overheated and I warped the head gasket.

 

my dad has the cavalier now i guess its in shop or something...when i drove the car back from school it over heated again i droped off this girl at her house and waited ther for my dad to take a look at it since its his car....i guess the fan stoped working and all the coolent fluid or whatever leaked

 

I use to have a 2002 z24 cavalier and it overheated if I sat still like at a drive thru or stop light and I could smell sumthing but I had it 4 like 90K miles. Now my buddy is driving it and its still running strong. do u have a intake? When I bought my car new in 02 it never did it but when I started adding crap then it started.

 

If you have water, your themostat stuck---replace it and the cap. Have the system press tested