Driving the DeLorean home from work Friday night, A/C running, I'm sitting at a red light a mile from home, and I start to smell something burning. I look over to my passenger side, and see an unhealthy amount of smoke coming from somewhere behind the passenger seat. At this point I think the car's on fire, so I kill the A/C and turn the car off, preparing for the worst as I pop the engine cover. Thankfully, I see nothing, no smoke, no fire, everything looks fine back there. Go back into the cabin though and smoke is still coming out from behind the passenger seat, and I start to smell burnt plastic. At this point I realize if must be coming from the relay compartment. After about a 5 minute wait, the smoke starts to clear up, start the car up, and make it home.
Open up the relay compartment and sure enough, discover the fan fail fused jumper wire has melted. The other relays looked fine and nothing else appears to have burned or melted.
Couple questions
1) I've never heard of this fused wire melting to the point of generating so much smoke before, is that known to happen with it?
2) Is the wire melting like this a sign that my fans might be on their way out? The car still has the original fans from what I know, and I've never previously had any overheating issues or problems with them.
Probably time for me to order Dave's solid state fan fail unit