After living in FL for 25 yrs I can trouble shoot and diagnose/fix most a/c problems. But now I'm living at 9000ft where it gets down to -30/40F in the winter. My heater has stopped doing its job and I'm lost when it comes to trouble shooting heater issues. Once the car is up to temp in the morning I still get nothing except cold air. If i'm driving for a while at decent speed I get the slightest bit of warm air coming out of the vents. It's becoming a bit of a safety issue when my breath instantly freezes onto the inside of the windshield, diminshing almost all visibility during my morning commute. Where do i begin? Should be an easy one I hope.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Heater core, see if you leaking Antifreeze inside the car.

 

I imagine that your temperature guage hits right below midrange after about 5 minutes of driving right? In that cold weather I guess you would have driveability problems if the thermostat was faulty, but my heater would only blow cool air until I changed mine out. Now it blows hot in 3 minutes and a good thing 'cause it was about 50 degrees down here in SoCal this morning.

 

I've been going through diagnosing what started as close to what you described, but that the heat lagged behind the engine temp significantly.

First thing to check is to confirm that your cooling system is completely full of antifreeze including bleeding it.

Thought I had it when I changed the thermostat. Mine had some rubbing, so I figured it was hanging up and then once reaching a hight temp - it would open...

Well, then it seemed like the flow through the radiator was very low, so I changed that...

Fixed the heat - it starts to heat up just after the needle starts to rise.

But, I continue to have an overheat situation...

 

I'm pretty sure this is the problem. Happened to my old Cadillac. I lived In Reno, NV for a couple of months. Coming from California. The heater core fucked up and antifreeze would get in my car. Got it fixed immediately due to cold ass weather.

I picked up the yellow book and called a lot of mechanics who can do this, and the difference in prices was staggering. Some guys were charging over 200 bucks. I finally got hold of a small shop who did it for under 150. Look around, and ask. Don't settle for the first mechanic.

 

My heater will work fine while at speed, but when driving @ 40 or below or at idle, it blows cold. It only started doing that after I had the radiator replaced (don't ask) and they've bled the line for air bubbles since to try and fix it with no success. I'm going to double-check the coolant level when I pick it up this morning.

Anyone have any idea as to why my 3.2 would be doing this? Thanks in advance.

ps. the search feature is down or I would have used it instead of posting.

 

When I picked the car up this afternoon, the shop said they had bled the line but that there was no air in it and that they couldn't fix the problem.......

Miraculously, after they had done that, the heater worked fine.