Hey guys,
Ok, so heres the issue...... I was driving to work this morning and all was fine, heater was on warm, maybe 75ish. Got to work no issue and did my thing. When I got off, I went maybe 5 minutes, stopped for gas and then hit the freeway. Right when I got on the freeway, I noticed smoke. It was coming out pretty thick from my glove box, and top dash vents. I got off the freeway right away and checked about the inside/outside and uder the hood and saw no fire. The smoke was isolated from inside the car, and was strongest from the glove box area. It was white smoke, with a sweet smell, almost like fresh burnt thin plastic. Now comon sense says this would be the heater took a dump. The issue is I have never heard of a hearter taking a dump in a 05, heaters normally go a distance before this takes place.

Please, any ideas or is this pretty much the confirmed issue? And if so, if it hard to fix, and how much?
Thanks in advance guys!

 

What was the engine temp?

Sounds like something electrical burnt up, any aftermarket stereo stuff, or hardwired aftermarket electronics?

Would the ac/heater blower still work? If not it could've been a catastrophic failure of the motor or the the wiring. Check all of your fuses to see if any of them blew.

 

when you say "sweet plasticy" yeah sounds like something electric burnt out but it really could be anything, dont think that just because you had your heater on at some point that morning that it was def the heater. theres plenty of hot wires going all throughout the backside of your dash, weather or not you had something specific running at the time, all the positive leads always have 12v running to them at all times. Sorry cant be more help but theres way to many things under the dash to even try to speculate what it could be with just that description, youre just going to have to climb under there with a flashlight and start tearing out trim and dash bits to see where somethings burning

 

The odd thing is it stopped! Now I am not going to ignore it but do you think I should drive it to work the next 2 days before I can check it more effectivly?

 

I've never had this issue with a Subaru, but I had a very similar thing happen with my Mitsubishi 3000GT and it went on for around a week and it turned out to be a blown capacitor in my ECU! Not saying that's what it is, but if it was smoking, its worth looking into it and and atleast carrying a fire extinguisher if you're going to be driving it.

 

I would strip out the glove box parts and other trim. Maybe even the whole dash. Drive it disassembled if you're going to anyway. And if it does happen again at least you will get a better idea of whats up and you wont have fire damage on your interior bits.

 

heater core?

 

this.

Pretty much the best thing to do is strip away as much of the dash/trim you can, turn your car on and climb underneath there with a flashlight and turn on as many accessories as possible and try to reproduce the symptoms to see where the smoke/short is. thats what any shop would do