This question concerns a 2016 300S AWD.

I know I'm going to look like an idiot here, but here I go anyway.

I almost ran out of gas recently, and my buddy offered to help with his gas can. So I opened my gas cap for him and let him do his thing while I was working on something else. This is my first 300, and I had no idea at the time that I had to use the special funnel from the trunk area. I realized something was wrong when I started hearing gas splashing on the ground. Turns out my buddy poured about 2-3 gallons of gas in, and none of it went into the gas tank. All of it went down thru the "tamper proof" thing, which (from what I can tell), empties in the inside of the left wheel well (behind a piece of the frame or something), onto the ground.

As you can imagine, my car stinks like gas. Since then, I've cleaned the inside of that wheel well a bunch of times, run hot water with dish soap, etc thru the tamper proof area a bunch of times, let the car air out for a week, etc. The gas smell is pretty much gone when you sniff near the wheel well, but when I park the car in the garage, my garage will smell like gas. It's been almost 3 weeks and I've cleaned everything I can think of.

Does anyone know the path the gas takes when it goes thru that tamper proof thing? Am I pretty much screwed with regard to the smell? I'm at a loss for what else I can do at this point. I definitely won't be lighting a match in my garage..

Thanks.

 

Just leave it parked outside for a few days. The smell will go away eventually. Gasoline is quite volatile (meaning it evaporates easily) and will eventually all evaporate. It's very doubtful that you will accumulate a high enough concentration of gasoline vapors to actually burn but the smell in the garage would be unpleasant.

Instructions on how to add fuel using a can will be found in the owners manual. Spend an hour reading through it some night and you will learn many interesting things about your car.

 

Sometimes I will have a gas smell after a normal fill up if I put in any extra gas after the automatic shutoff. For this car, they really mean it when they say, "Do Not Top Off!" Never have this problem with any off my other cars? Go away after a day or two of driving.