im driving an '87 Saab 9000, and after a 2 hour drive on the highway , smoke started coming out of the middle vent as well as the ashtray. i immediatley pulled over and shut off my car and the smoke cleared. however when i start my car up again, my heat goes on automatically and it continued to smoke and then the heat stopped and the smoke stopped. i was able to make it home but now i have no heat. im assuming a small fire started or somethin shorted out and caused a mini fire??? it smelled very much like burning wires. any suggestions on what to do??? or has this happend to anyone?? i dont want to pay a mechanic by the hour for a "learning experience" if you know what i mean... please help
- i should also mention i checked all the fuses and they appear to be fine, my fluids had all been topped off prior to my drive as well
You really shouldn't have burnt any of the wires, unless you or a previous owner rewired something to override the fusebox. The fuses are there to protect the wiring. It's extremely unlikely that wiring could be damaged before blowing a fuse for the circuit in question. I would say it's much more likely that a component in your ACC system has burnt out. There are several components which come to mind - the ACC unit itself (not common in my experience), the fan speed controller, and the fan itself. This assumes your car is a turbo... if not, you will have the manual climate control, and only the fan motor would apply. If you have the ACC, does it still light up, but you just get no fan operation?
Well, that rules out a couple ACC related items. When you say no lights, are you talking all of the interior lights? Do any electrical functions work at all? There is another possibility. Some 1987 (and possibly 1988 and 1989) were known to have substandard wire insulation that degrades over time. I experienced this on my old '87, but only on exposed wires in the engine compartment, never wires inside the harnesses or inside the cabin. What happens is that the wire insulation basically disintegrates, exposing the bare wire, which can short against other wires or exposed grounded metal. I think that the main power lead going to the fusebox is not fused at the battery. Therefore, if this was somehow shorted to ground, it could indeed melt and burn things without blowing any fuses. I have never heard of this happenning, but it certainly seems as something major in the dash has fried. If it were not for the smoke coming out of the ashtray, I would be more inclined to suspect something has fried in the engine compartment or behind the false bulkhead (base of windshield), and the climate control system was simply sucking the smoke through. But with the ashtray smoking as well, I would suspect that the burning was actually going on behind the dash inside the cabin. If you let us know what components still work, if any, that would help narrow it down.
It is fairly easy to remove the glovebox, which you can do without removing the top of the dash. That will let you view the guts of the fusebox and most of the wiring behind the dash. That would be my second step of inspection, after first removing the negative cable from the battery.
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