For about a week now I was kind of noticing a gas smell around driver door. Tonight it seemed very strong coming from drivers side back seat. We removed seats and took off the metal circle cover but found the area dry and dirty. There is very little info about this area online that I can find. Possibly useful info: no visible leak under car, heard weird clunk sound 2 times recently coming from back of car approximately.

any help really appreciated, my guy is pretty handy but we are having trouble diagnosing.

thanks in advance

 

most likely its the seal around the top of the fuel pump. On many models, the fuel pump is accessed by removing the rear seat's bottom cushion so that's a good place to start. That also explains why you smell fuel in the cabin.

 

Thanks for the lead. We uncovered the fuel pump but it did not have the expected fuel sitting in it, it’s very dry and dusty dirty. Would the seal be a likely problem given how dry it looks with no detectable gas residue? We noticed this morning before driving it had zero gas smell. Brought it to a shop and they couldn’t get it to smell. After driving home less than 10 miles it does have gas smell on both sides of car exterior in the back seat area and a bit near floor of back seat area. When we had driven steep hills last night it produced an incredibly strong gas odor all along driver side, in back seat cabin near floor especially.