I had just pulled on to a road, not hard on the car or anything. All of a sudden I hear a loud ticking noise coming from the car. It sounded very much like a valve went out.

However,

After sitting there 5 to 10 minutes waiting for the tow truck to show up, with the car off, I got a loud hissing noise from something releaving pressure, then what a appeared to be smoke coming from the bottom to middle on the driver side of the car. There are no fluids leaking, but I didn't have a flash light to see if there was any oil in the coolent. I changed the oil two weeks ago and I haven't had an overheating issue.

Does anyone think that the AC compressor went out causing the freon to spew out and make that ticking noise? I tried starting the car and running it, but it is hard to tell if the AC is working since the ambient temp is chilly. This happened within the last two hours so I'm just going to go to sleep and give it look after work tomorrow.

I'm just doing a premature post to see if anyone has some input. Tomorrow I'm going to pull the AC belt off and see if the noise goes away. I'm hoping it is the AC. My wife and I just opened a restaurant and so there is no budget for car issues. Especially a car my wife would love to see go. lol