Heater and Defroster

I have a 1996 Ford Thunderbird, V6 3.8L. Recently I have noticed that when I turn it to Floor/Defrost and turn on the rear window defroster the car begins to fill with what smells like electrical smoke or burning wires. I have also noticed that some coolant is mysteriously disappearing. If anyone else has experienced this problem, please tell me how you fixed it. Thanks in advance.

are you sure you smell an electric smell,cause if you losing coolent it should smell like coolent wich has a sweet smell to it.if your possitive its electric check all you wires somewhere there is a short thats causing a wire to heat up it could be real confusing because the hot wire dose not nesseraly mean its the bad wire. the wire getting hot is probably part of your heater panel cause when you turn it on you smell it. but the bad wire can be anywhere this is where it it go over my head but ill tell you its sometimes not an easy fix even a mehcanic will have a hard time .
i had a problem simlar one time only under my hood and i did not know where it was til the wire got so hot it broke off and my car stalled so i was forced to figure it out. and it all lead to a factory intalled alarm and door lock under the dash. i new it was factory intalled cause it said ford on it and by the time ai got the car 15 years later i didnt know it had it til i found it under the dash.well my father who is a mehcanic helped at that time and told me it was improperly put in and these butchers do this all the time and he argues w/ them. they state it works just fine and they never have any problems.and he tells them your tapping into a circut in the car that is putting out a blank amount of amps and by going into it you might max the draw like in my case you wont know right away but years down the road you will have problems(like me).
i dont want to scar you to much just telling you my headace i dont like electrical problems.BUT YOURS COULD BE AS EASY AS CHANGING THE HEATER PANAL.from my experence do it before something else wears & breaks from it.

I have a 1996 Ford Thunderbird, V6 3.8L. Recently I have noticed that when I turn it to Floor/Defrost and turn on the rear window defroster the car begins to fill with what smells like electrical smoke or burning wires. I have also noticed that some coolant is mysteriously disappearing. If anyone else has experienced this problem, please tell me how you fixed it. Thanks in advance.

Pull the fuse for the rear defroster, then try floor/defrost. If no smell occurs, then refit the fuse and try the rear defrost with the heater motor off. If the smell returns, it's in the defroster wiring. Does the defroster actually heat the rear window? If not, the line may be shorting to ground. If it's just open you'll have no smell or defrost.
Keep a fire extinguisher handy for the above tests! Actually fixing it is a tedious matter of physically tracing wires. If the smell only occurs when the heater fan is running, then that's the wiring or motor to repair.

On the coolant loss, do you ever get a whiff of antifreeze when it's freshly shut off and you get out? My '93 does this; I just haven't traced the leak yet. Leaks can be very tiny and if high enough in the system they'll just blow a little vapor. I had an '89 3.8L that lost coolant and I eventually found seepage at the back of the short (5 or 6 in.) rubber hose between the pipe across the top of the engine and the heater core.

Unfortunately, another loss can be through a head gasket either into a combustion chamber (check plugs for soft buff coloured fouling) or into oil galleries (check for greyish oil) or both. You won't smell this unless there's so much leaking that you trail a big cloud of steam.