I used to get a strange fume smell inside my van when the fridge was
running on propane.  It is slightly like burned propane exhaust, and also
like burned toast.  I had run the fridge  a lot, thinking it had run enough
to burn off any dust that had been on it.  But I still smelled it.  (window
closed, btw)  I had been having trouble lighting the fridge at times and
finally did a "pull it out and check it" operation.  I found a few very
minor air leaks at the combustion chamber and sealed them with high temp
silicon.  I used soapy water and had an assistant blow into the exhaust
pipe to create pressure to find the leaks.  www.snurl.com/vanagon  has some
info on what I did while it was out.
Edward

At 12:25 PM 1/9/2004, you wrote:
>On Friday 09 January 2004 12:32 am, BajaLeo wrote:
> > Thanks to the fridge article at Vanagon.com and from reviewing the posts
> > from over the years, I finally got my fridge working. It gets very cold.
> > Did the maintenance suggested and added an iniside fan and a couple of
> > thermometers also. Occasionally though, I get a whiff of something. It's
> > not propane. It smells hot, like burned gases? Anybody experience this
> > while running the fridge on propane?
>
>Is your window open?  When I run my fridge with the window over it open,
>every so often a whiff of the propane exhaust blows in through the window.
>Smells like the exhaust from a lit propane stove.
>
>You could also be smelling dust burning off the burner compartment, if the
>fridge hasn't been run much recently.