Just had a tremendous past couple of days and it's got me worrying over the worst possible fixes.

Early this week I noticed the temperature guage on my 97 Blazer was jumping up and down, and while driving might quickly jump to the red, then after coming off the gas, the temperature would return to normal.

A couple days ago the temperature wouldn't go to the red, but was dancing around between 180-230 degrees when I would be on the gas. After this I checked the coolant, and noticed it was a little full and topped it off. For the rest of that day the temperature was still dancing.

Yesterday, the coolant seemed to be working as the temperature returned to normal (170 or so). Late in the night I had stopped and killed the engine and there was smoke and the smell of coolant coming from directly below the AC Condenser (it may have been below the reservior, it was windy out and hard to see at night). There was also a slow drip of coolant on the ground behind the passenger front tire. The drip stopped after 5 minutes or so and the engine cooled.

This morning I put some water in the system just to be safe, and then noticed that a small amount of smoke was coming from the rear of the engine compartment, and like the previous issue, stopped after 5 minutes when the engine cooled.

Any help would be tremendous to find out where I can start to fix this.

Thank you.

 

This used to happen with my Rodeo, it had a crack in the head.....not saying thats your prob........sounds like its leaking and burning off before much of it is seen on the ground, wish I could help.
Mine was leaking coolant into one spark plug and causing it to sputter, I would have to clean it out, put vasoline on it and put it back in, but yeah, smoke, small drip, then I totaled it and got my blazer.

 

All I can think of is that the coolant reserve tank has a leak??? You can pick up a new one for less than 30 bucks. You also could be overheating and that is why you have coolant coming out by the passenger front tire..Thats right where the drip line is for the reserve tank. I personally was tired of leak problems and i put a new radiator, water pump, thermostat, and reserve tank. I flushed the whole system at least ten times to make sure it was all clean in there before i installed all the new colling system parts. Its been a few months and I havent had one cooling problem and absolultely no leaks.

 

You may have a leak at one or both of your heater hoses, at the heater core connection. Look for a fresh trail from under the connections, to the rear, inner, edge of the inner fender. I replaced my heater core last year, and the hoses just began leaking last week. I have two on order and will replace them this week. They are about $18.00 ea.

 

I agree with the leaking resevoir. It seems it you started smelling coolant after you added some coolent, so you could be loosing the exess. The question is how fast is the collent temperature jumpping? If it's instantanious then you might have a short somewere that's screwing with you coolant temp sensor.