My girlfriend has a 99 A4 2.8 Quattro 5-Speed. Today we met for lunch and on her way home she called me and said that her car was smoking as she was going up hill and she pulled over into a parking lot. I met up with her about 20 minutes and got a very strong smell from the engine bay. i popped the hood and didn't see anything significantly wrong. It wasn't an oil burning smell, it sorta smelled like coolant. when i asked her about it she said she just saw alittle smoke coming out and the car kinda seemed to not have any more going up the hill. so after letting it sit for about 15 minutes after i got there i decided to just start the car. keep in mind that i did checked the gauges and temps and everything seems normal. and i let it run for about ten minutes. the smell was there but it was more like it was slowly going away and i saw nothing leaking from the top or bottom of the engine bay.

so i decided to just start driving it home. the car drove fine, no loss of power, no smoke, nothing. except the lite smell. got home and still nothing. ANYONE GOT ANY IDEAS AS TO WHAT IT IS OR COULD BE?

THANKS.

 

What side of the enginewas the smoke coming from?

 

She says that it was coming more from the drivers side of the engine bay.........

 

Check the small hose going into the coolant expansion bottle while the engine is running, there should be a small T hose connector where 3 hoses connect, try jiggling the hoses and see if any coolant drips out.

 

ok I'll check that. i thought isawwhat looked like coolant had dripped on the engine cover also.here's another factor. downtown has alot of hills so she was going up a few steep grade hills. i thought maybe the clutch as well

 

probably the collant resivoir hose is leaking a bit with built up pressure i had the sme problem, if it happens again there throw in some stop leak, its not a temp fix it will permanetly fix the leak, ive used and it works.

 

yeah i did notice that when i took the cap off of the coolant it did have a little bit of pressure built up. that sounds like that is the problem. THANKS!