Anyone smell smoke?

I figured I would share my little story in hopes that it might avoid someone else running into the same issue as I did.

I work downtown Ottawa and live West of town so the return home in the evening is often in heavier traffic than my travels in the mornings.
So, after entering the 417 the other evening the traffic came to near immediate bumper-to-bumper speed limit... and so without my speed creating a draft through the car I decided to turn on the blower. All was well for about 30 seconds and then white smoke started coming out of all the vents.
This was not your ordinary coolant smoke - this was burning plastic smoke!

So, of course I shut off the blower and attempted to pull over. Unfortunately in the downtown core there is no shoulder on the 417.
Not being a person by nature that likes to create trouble I decided that in order to avoid congesting the traffic any more than it already was I would pull ahead into an on-ramp lane (that wasn't too far ahead but allowed me to get out of the main flow of traffic).

Before I got to the end of the 300 foot lane I couldn't even see out of my front windshield the smoke had gotten so bad.

So I shut off the car, grabbed the fire extinguisher (that I keep on the passenger side) and popped the hood to investigate and extinguish the flames.
To my amazement... no flames. Not even any heat or melted wires....
So, I started towards the back to check the trunk (engine compartment) to ensure that nothing was going on back there) and to disconnect the battery to thwart what I not believe is an electrical fire.
...meanwhile the white smoke continues to pour out of my vents...
The engine looked fine... and of course I couldn't find a tool to disconnect the battery!
Moving back to the front to check that there was no fire under the car I noticed the smoke was still coming out of the vents.
I couldn't locate the source of the smoke... but it took about 15 minutes for the smoke to stop.

It would seem that I had time because it took about 30 minutes before a tow-truck could get me (paid for the CAA membership in one trip...).

I had the Fiero towed back to McIntosh Automotive off highway 7 in Carleton Place (where my mechanic Wes works - absolutely the best Fiero mechanic I know in the Ottawa area).
They didn't mind me leaving it there overnight (as it was late and they were leaving for the day). I didn't want to try working on it and have it catch fire on me without Wes being around to assist me with the repairs afterwards, lol...

The next day I went back and pulled the blower motor. It looked to be in perfect shape. Next I pulled the blower motor resistor. Immediately I knew what had happened...
With the resistor came a ton of ash and soot.

It was interesting I didn't run into this problem earlier - but before I got the Fiero it had been stored for sometime. During that time the air intake (in front of the windshield) filled with leaves and pine needles.
When the blower motor resistor heated up (which is what is does when it is not running at full power) it requires the air to pass over it from the air intake to cool it.
The leaves and crap in there lit up.

So now I need to vacuum all of the remains out and see how badly damaged the intake is. Appears that all the electrical is working.

The moral of the story... check your front air intake!
I recently hear a horror story of a guy on the highway who watched his Fiero burn because of this issue (he didn't have a fire extinguisher).

Fun times with these cars, eh?

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