If its not broken DONT fix it,bought new 2009 maibu,changed oil every 3000,nver had probem with car,just thought because i have200k miles would be good to clean heads, had dealer put ina BG product,about 2 weeks after that the car see muffled and the gas peddle is slow to react,now six months later iam starting to smell gas,my guess catalytic converter,can anyone help,as soon as a woman walks in some mechanics will sell you themoon,tell me what you think
Is the Check Engine light on? If not there’s not a problem with catalytic converter.
One area where gas odors can come from is leaking fuel injector O-rings.
Tester
If you put on 200,000 miles in 4 years, your car had an easy time. With good quality gas the inside of the engine should be very clean.
However, at this mileage you should do all the maintenance the book calls for, not what the dealer says. By now you should have new spark plugs, and whatever else the book calls for. It’s not unusual for the fuel system to need cleaning and some injectors needing to be replaced as well. You should go to a good mechanic who can actually diagnose what you need . Most dealers have standard service packages which they want to sell you, which may or may not have anything to do with your problem.
You’ll need to have a shop take a look at it and see what’s going on. there’s not enough information here to guess.
If all you ever did to it was have the oil changed every 3000 miles then I’m surprised that it didn’t start running poorly sooner.
How about some new plugs and wires? Frequency of oil change is quite irrelevant to anything that would cause the smell of fuel.
The odds of a BG additive causing a problem are just about zero.
There’s not enough info presented to make much of a guess about the problem, or plural, and there seems to be a lot of assumptions made on your part.
Maybe it would have been a good idea to get that problem looked at before allowing it to fester for 6 months.