Kind of in a bad position to have my truck looked at. Yesterday I started smelling a burning smell in the truck after a 100 mile drive. I turned the heater fan on high and a bunch of smoke filled the cabin. I immeadiately stopped the engine, the smoke stopped and lifted the hood expecting a fire. Nothing. Was 30 miles from home so I took a gamble. No more smoke.

Any ideas? Over-heated wire? Lost my job so cash is short. What to do; what to do?

 

mine did this when the bearings on my air conditioning compressor were shot.. I also had the fan motor start smoking before.. but the compressor was the worst.. stunk, and smoked real bad..

 

are you sure it was smoke and not steam? a blown heater core will emit steam from the vents when you first kick it on and it will fog the windows.

 

Smell is everything...does it smell like burnt electrical, or the sticky stinky sweet smell of burning antifreeze?

 

Smell and color. Black smoke would be electrical while white smoke (vapor) indicates a leaking heater core.

 

The heater core or antifreeze leak smell.

My wife calls it the maple syrup smell....

It kinda does smell like maple syrup, LOL

 

i fired some wires the other day and had white smoke filling the engine bay.

its not the same problem as you, but burnt wires will throw out white smoke

 

it depends, rubber and plastic throw off black smoke and some wire insulation throws off white smoke.
maybe the black smoke was quickly overcome by the white smoke from the wire itself melting after it cooked the insulation.

 

I think I found the root cause... I had mice build a nest and have babies in the heater fan housing last summer. I took it apart and cleaned out all the hood insulation the mice used for the nest. It appears that I did not get it all.

Yesterday I took a peak around and had insulation fly out of the vents. I can say the smell is burnt something; the cabin smells bad. The smoke was white. I plan to get a vacum out and frabreeze to see if I can clean things up. The heat appears to be working fine. I will monitor and report back.

Thanks for the tips and suggestions on where to look.

 

i had a nest between the hood and the insulation last winter. then a few months ago i noticed that the back corner was ripped enough that it wouldn't stay on the hood so i ripped the liner off.

so you think it was the nest cooking on the heater core or the blower motor?