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Driving home from Boise, we smelled cooking electrics - it was the small inverter I had purchased at Costco a couple of months ago - the fan died and it cooked inside. We just had a couple of phones and a MacBook charger on it. Pulled in to the Yakima Costco to return it, noticed smoke coming from under the hood.
Oh, god.
Looks like the A/C compressor puked, oil spun around its pulley, and the alternator or other neighboring component was complaining like fried bearings.
Dear god.
Smoke was wafting up from the driver's side firewall - the firewall insulation was smoldering (glowing embers!), yet I could not find any source of ignition. About a square foot of insulation was gone. We looked as deeply as possible, given no space and limited visibility around everything, but turned up nothing. Wiring appeared to be okay, everything functioned normally (except the now-dead A/C); we threw a little water on the glowing stuff to put it out and waited - nothing sparked or sputtered. Did something flammable get caught up in the engine from the road? I couldn't find anything.
Knowing we were a mere 40 miles from home (oh, so close!) and that Scanwest is another 100+ miles, I called and made a Monday inspection appointment with them.
My wonderful Saab seemed to recover, no more smoke, so I decided to chance going a little further to check its behavior. All seemed okay for a few miles, until we hit a slowdown; then, more smoke appeared (CRAP!) we pulled off, parked at Wal Mart and bought a fire extinguisher while we waited for the AAA tow. I don't know if the motion fanned the still-hot insulation or something new decided to ignite.
While we waited, the burning something stopped burning - probably ran out of fuel.
I am mystified; tomorrow, I'll put it up on ramps and have a better look around.
...saying a Saab prayer to St. Rob (Walden) - we're going back to Boise in a couple of weeks and I really don't want to have to take some rental turd because my lovely Saab could not be saved. My Luxury Liner is not yet ready for Valhalla.
posted by 71.80.194...
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