Smoke Poured Out Windshield Vents

We just bought our 17 year old a 95 Grand Am w/four cylinder. He started, drove 100 yards (in nearly sub-zereo temps), and said smoke poured out the windshield vents. Stopped car. There is a fould burning smell in car for last few days but all is normal with car. I found it has a coolant heater for cold weather. Could that have blown out? Runs great and all systems normal, no leaks of any kind anywhere to be found. Any ideas??

Actually, it sounds to me like there may be a heater core issue. Have you run the heat since? The heater core resides inside the dash and gets its heat from the engine. Basically, the engine has two antifreeze hoses which exit the rear (usually) of the engine. One pushes the heated water into the heater core (through the firewall) and one recieves the water back (from the firewall). When a heater core goes bad, it can leak into the car. Check the floorboard of the car as close to the firewall as you can after you have run it for a few minutes. If it is wet, that's your best bet.

I had the same thing happen with my 93 Grand Am. I found out that my heater core compartment was full of leaves, and these leaves were touching a resistor and started a fire. I had the mechanic clean it all out, but it did still smell pretty bad for a while.

Good Luck

I'm going with heater core...

I had a similar situation with my 93 Grand Am, but when I pulled over, the antifreeze was pouring out of the car. This was four days after I got it at about 5:00 o'clock in the morning. I had to replace the heater core.