Russell82

there's fire… PO stored my US 82 Auto in a barn, mice nested in the HVAC, lots of acorns and oak leaves, heat was a little fragrant but worked fine first 1K miles. My dealer-mechanic cleaned the HVAC while waiting on Tbelt etc parts, first time I turned on the heater I got clouds of smoke from center and DS vent, smelled like oak leaves, pretty scary, shut down the heat right away. Now 700 miles after the cleaning, heater's been OK, usually smells of toasted oak leaves for a minute then clears and works well. This morning ran with heat for 2 hours no problem, but after stopping for breakfast, when I turned the heat on again got some oak smell and a few wisps of smoke, followed by very serious clouds of plastic smelling smoke, from the vents but mostly behind the pod. Not good, panic stop from 80+, going for the fire extinguisher and thinkng the worst. Cooled off by itself, thankfully, after shutting down the heat. Two more cold hours of Michigan highways without heat, not fun but livable considering the risk.

OK, presume the blower is full of oak leaves and dust and junk. Other than the blower, anything else electrical or hot enough in the HVAC likely to torch up debris like this? Any idea what plastic might have burned this morning? Didn't really smell like wire insulation. Due to climate control, I can't really test it without turning up the temperature to ~75, so I don't know whether it smokes with only the fan at low temp, kind of scared to keep fooling with it. Any suggestions appreciated.

Chucker

Russell, what part of Michigan are you in? I too have an 82 928. Ellsworth, Michigan near Charlevoix/East Jordan. Someday I would like to gather a group of us and have lunch on a June/July afternoon.

1982 928 White
Chucker <img src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" border="0" alt="[cheers]" />

Normy

Russel-

I can't imagine what is going on- perhaps some wood material has gotten into the bearings of the blower motor. This is a big job to clear- it requires the whole dashboard be taken apart!

-The heater in your car is basically a radiator. It works by passing air over a set of tubes filled with coolant- which never gets above about 250 degrees. This is not typically hot enough to cause spontaneous combustion of oak leaves.

Your dashboard and your door panels are made partially of partical board- a common feature in German cars. It is possible that a short circuit is getting some of this stuff going.....I'm building hypothesis that fit the facts.

Normy~