On the wife's 94 V6 the drivers power window switch just burned up. I mean literally melted! Sparkd and fire and smoke. Dang. Anyway has anyone heard of this happening? It seems like the circuit breaker should have done something.


Harold

 

Wow; scary stuff. I wonder if there was any recall on it? http://www.alldata.com has recall info. The switch could've been dirty inside, and just started arc'ing internally. That's a big circuit breaker on the power windows, it might not have noticed.

 

I had just as strange of a thing happen to my 91. Only in a different place. For about a month off and on I would notice this smell, kind of like exhaust mixed with rotten eggs. I totally thought it was my cattalitic converter but then I started to get small streams of smoke comming out through my middle vents on my dash. What the heck??? Okay then I though it might be a blown head gasket.. because I had a lot of smoke come in through the vents on my dad's old 1980 Oldsmobile station Wagon and it ended up being that.

Well I opened up the area where the radio/heater controls are so I could look down there. I thought the smoke might be just comming up from there. LOW AND BEHOLD... part of the small circular part on the heating/air control unit (in the back - not visible from front) would turn bright orange and start to smoke. It was really weird. That smell was plastic burning. Hope it wasn't toxic. But it never blew any kind of fuse or any kind of warning. If it kept on burning it surely would have ignited into a bigger flame. Luckily it never did. Well I just went to a junk yard and took apart another heater control unit and used the part on mine.. .and it's all good.

 

GoonieZ28, that sounds just like something that has happened to me once. I got in my car (it was baking on the sun fer about 2-3hrs), turned the radio on (mind you, heater controls all off). Smoke starts pouring out of that area. Scared the hell outta me. Hasnt one it again, so maybe it was a one time thing? Please give more details on your experience, if you can...

 

The weird thing was, it would only start burning when I would put the controls onto defrost and heat (I'm sure of the defrost but can't remember if it did that for heat too). Any other setting was fine. Also, it didn't matter what the temperature control lever was set to.

Buck268,
I'd disconnect the heater control unit from the console holding it and try different settings on the thing while looking at it closely.

Oh yeah.. I think it also would only start burning when the blower was on high... gosh the whole thing sounds totally bizzare... but that's what happened. So try different settings and different levels like low, high, etc....

 

Same thing happed in the 92. Ended up buying a new part at the dealership.