Unidentified Smoking/ Burning Problem

[Paul Orton]

I recently bought a 2001 RX300 which has been converted to run on LPG as well as petrol. It has an imtermittent problem which at last has happened to me. Driving from cold first thing on a damp morning all is fine until after having driven for about half a mile. There was a smell of toffee apples in the car (possibly electrical burning, but not quite as strong) and smoke comes out from under the bonnet. On opening the bonnet the smoke seems to be coming from somewhere immediately behind the radiator, but I couldn't work out exactly where.

Today I left the bonnet open for two minutes ready to go back and find where the origin of the smoke was, but after two minutes the smoke had gone and there was no sign of the problem. The car ran fine without any evidence of having had a problem.

The smoke seems to be steam with a faint odour of burning. When it happened the first time I took it to the Lexus dealer but as it didn't happen for them they couldn't do anything other than have a look round. That first time a red warning loght came on at around the same time but the dealer couldn't identify why.

All three times this has happened it has been a damp morning. Today I had the air conditioning on with the front and side window clearing on. Last time it happened the air conditioning was on also. Does this sound like a problem with the air conditioning?

Any suggestions would be helpful as I bought this car to give my wife peace of mind.

Thanks,

Paul Orton

[star a]

maybe theres a bit of gunk on one of the air con pipes (which get very very hot.)

[Paul Orton]

But when I turn the engine off and let it get cool it doesn't happen again- it only happens seemingly randomly.