Can anyone help!!
 

Hi!
I have a Chrysler neon, 2001 model, and last week smoke and a burning smell came pouring out of the steering wheel column from the gap around the indicator lever. Since then, i have not detected any smoke, but occasionally a burning smell. My dashboardd and gear stick lights no longer alluminate at night and my cd player wont work since the smoke and smell appeared!!
Has anyone else experienced this problem? Or does anyone else have any idea what the problem is? Is my car likely to blow up????? Two garages have refused to look at my car!

Thanks
Hope someone out there can help!!!
x

I think the blow up already happened -
 

but fizzled. More serious now, I have heard that sometimes fuseable links (wires that burn out when overloaded) are used under the dash and in the steering column to distribute power instead of routing regular wire to the fuse panel and putting a fuse in the circuit. If this technology was used in your case, that would explain the smoke and stink. In either case you had an obvious overload and probably melted some insulation on a wire, therefore some lights and cd now inoperative. I would start opening up the steering column layer by layer until I found what "smoked". I think it will be obvious. Then you will have to figure out why it got fried, fix that and then replace the burned wire(s).
hope this helps
unkski