electical smoke from the front of the car

[_deano]

Sitting at the lights today on the way home; foot on the break pedal, car is in drive, hand break off. All of a sudden the car judders as if it wanted to stall and the ABS, DSC and a yellow handbreak sign comes on the engine then runs a bit lumpy so i put the car into park and rev the engine to about 1K rpm. When the lights go green i pull away and everything seems fine until i see smoke coming out of the front grill and i can smell electircal smoke.
I pull over turn off the car and open the bonnet to see smoke coming out from behind the bumper something was buring but i couldn't see what. Then the smoke goes from the grey/whit colour to a pinkish/red colour. Cue me $hitting a brick as i now think that this engine is going to set alight. I quickly get back in and now turn everything off (4way flashers, radio, lights) and pull out the keys and start to call the AA.
Then as soon as it started it stopped. I looked around and i couldn't see anything burnt and there was no more smell. So now i am baffled!
I get home and i've taken another look and there is nothing that looks damaged and i can't smell anything.
Does anyone have any idea what could have produced the smoke and the judder?

Fingers crossed it's nothing serious.

thanks

Dean

[mustard]

Konw of a current shape 7 series that did something similar, resulted in a new alternator IIRC

[_Deano]

oh dear, are they expensive?

[Egbert Nobacon]

Check the bearing on the Aircon compressor - if it has failed it can drag the belt which will cause all sorts of strange engine symptoms and possibly wreck the compressor - which may be the source of the smoke / smell.

Good luck

[_Deano]

Would the fan still kick in, even though i wasn't using the A/C at the time?

[_Deano]

Just been doing some testing and it seems that the problem might be done to a crappy circut. I have a subwoofer running in the boot and this is directly connected to the battery. If the negitive connection is a bit flakey could it mean that the battery is loosing a charge or power lost from the charging ring? Which in turn could lead to other problems?
I had the sub turned off on the way into work, but the air-con/lights/radio was on (radio allows me to turn off the sub)and there wasn't a problem.

or am i talking bollox?