Ooh heck: smoke from air-vent

I was driving MrsH's '96 Discovery today, and smoke suddenly started coming out of one of the air-vents. As my 2yo daughter was with me at the time, I pulled over ASAP and got her out. We were pretty close to our destination so I left the vehicle to cool and we went on foot.

Things that occurred to me afterwards...

• Temp gauge was reading normal
• I couldn't actually smell anything burning
• It ran fine when we drove back home

So, I'm wondering if this is maybe something to do with the aircon. As a classic car fan, aircon is rather a novelty to me so I'm not sure if it could cause this kind of symptom?

I'm not looking to fix the fault; just don't want to sound like an idiot when I take it to the garage. Any ideas?

hi did you have the heater on when it happened
and does the heater work now
my 94 disco did same thing but i did not notice that the fan motor had stopped and the smoke in the air vents was down to the motor burning out
just dont use the fan and it will be ok until you can get it fixed
it worked for me for about six months

Was it definately smoke and not steam?
Mine had steam coming from vents when the heater matrix first started to leak. This was followed by a very wet floor soon afterwards!

Thanks for the responses guys.

Steve, I had the aircon on blowing as cold as possible, but left it switched off on the drive back.

Mike, I assumed it was smoke as it swirled around like smoke does. But it didn't smell like smoke, it was more like the dry ice they use on stage.

I'll take a look at it over the weekend and book it into the garage for next week.

Thanks again for the responses,
David

sure it's not just condensation from the aircon system. I've seen that several times, specially on humid days.

i had snow from the dash of a disco

Treworgey 90 said:

sure it's not just condensation from the aircon system. I've seen that several times, specially on humid days.

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Best one I ever did was for some absolutely kin stupid reason was to turn the aircon off whilst driving just before a storm,very hot,very close,you know when yeh nickers stick to you! **** the whole car turned into a tropical rain forest because of the very humide hot air condenseing inside a cool car

hammerhead said:

...it was more like the dry ice they use on stage...

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That dry ice smell, well hazer/fog fluid smell your thinking of (dry ice is actually a solid lump of carbon dioxide that is then plunged into a bath of hot water) could smell similar to coolant as its a glycol/glycerine based fluid and coolant is glycol based so me thinks based on your description it was coolant steam you were smelling.

Matrix? Any water in the passenger foot well?

sure it's not just condensation from the aircon system. I've seen that several times, specially on humid days.

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Well it was certainly a very humid day, but it seemed rather thick to be condensation. Nice if it was just that though!

Discomania. Cheers but there's no water in the foot well at the mo.

I shall check out all these suggestions tomorrow. Today it's dark, ****ing down and heavy storms (and I don't have a garage)

Thanks again for all your responses, much appreciated.

Whatever else you do, BEFORE you do any more driving make sure the coolant level is right up to the mark, and I don't think it would do a lot of harm to carry some plain water in the back, maybe a 3 litre plastic juice bottle for instance.

Any water is better than not enough water if there's a leak.

CharlesY