Friend having some problems

Alright, so I'm cruising around with my buddy the other day, and we had to go the library to get some books for our senior project, and as we're getting out of the car, he says, "smell that?" I can smell something, but didn't know what it was, but he said it was radiator fluid. So I asked him if it was cracked, but he doesn't think so.
Then we're going to see if a friend is home, and there is a sort of loud knocking right next to where the shifter is, and he's like, "you hear that?" I'm like..."it doesn't sound good, is it your tranny?" He says he thinks so, but he doesn't know.

So, does anyone know what these problems could be? Thanks for the info.

Is it an automatic? If so you could have had an internal leak in the radiator allowing antifreeze to enter the transmissions cooling lines that flow through the rad. If this did happen you should see some oil in the rad

Nah, its a 96 manual.

Update: Yesterday it died on him 3 times going up a hill in 1st and 2nd so he could only make it to my house, from there we went outside and he tried to fire it up, it died twice within seconds, and it began leaking radiator fluid like crazy. We popped the hood and it was smoking hella bad right next to the head. He said it was probably a bad head gasket, but since it was problems with his tranny, I'm guessing he threw a rod or a bearing or something.

Anyone know? We need MASSIVE help!

Well the manual transmission doesn't use coolant for any thing. It's probably all in the motor.

Get him to check his oil, and if it has some weird brownish foam on the dipstick he got water inside the engine... and it probably needs rebuilding.

Besides with manual transmissions they usually start to drop out of gear, or stick in 1 geer when they are wearing out. and a fried transmission wouldn't stop the motor from running

Good luck.

We just towed it up to a guy's shop. I guess the guy has mad experience with S-10s and has rebuilt plenty of em. His guess : tranny is totally shot with cracked radiator OR bad gasket....very bad. He doesn't know yet, is checking it out.

If he tells you that it's the transmission, get a second opinion from another shop before you let him touch anything. I've never seen any manual transmission with rad hoses going to it (although some trailer packages might have a rad cooler included)

Plus a fried transmission wouldn't stop the engine from starting