I have a 1988 SE, 84k miles, overall very good condition. This is a new car for me and I don't know it well yet.

I noticed that there is warm (not hot) air coming out of the vents as if the heater is turned on slightly. This occurs all the time even when the temp is set to no heat.

Suggestions on where to start looking would be appreciated. I do have a FSM and Haynes manual, but would appreciate any guidance.

 

Mine does this too. I think I asked about it a long time ago and was told that it was normal. I just put the vents on the floor and it doesn't bother me. Or on the windshield when its raining.

 

Nearly ALL cars will do this, especially older ones.

 

Turn temperature selector to COOL and set the air to come from outside, not recirculate... Done.

 

Mine does the same thing, lol. I've just gotten used to it and do what everybody else has posted.

 

My car did the same thing... I just considered it normal behavior because my car doesn't have anything wrong with the cooling system or climate control. I found that if I left the climate control on the "red" or "warm" area of the slider, the engine would run cooler but the interior would get somewhat hot when I drove her hard. My A/C never had a charge so I just drove around with the windows down, and the blower off in the summer. Usually if I changed the slider to cold it wouldn't get as hot in the interior, but my engine temps would go up a tad. Considering where the heater core is located in the car, and how the climate control or "logicon" controls the air that goes through it, it's not surprising to me that warm air comes through the vents almost all the time. (Unless you have a working A/C of course)

 

the air blend door might be stuck slightly to the heat position. it might probably be ambient air from outside. is the recirculating button on when this happens?

 

its normal.
It is just excess air that is heated from the engine.
nothing to be concerned about.

 

It is totally normal. The idea is that fresh air is coming in from outside all the time unless you put the logicon in the recirculate mode. In olden times, this was considered a selling point and was called "flow-through ventilation." The temperature of the air flowing through will be affected by where you have the temperature slider set. So if you have it anywhere above the coldest setting, you'll be getting some heat from the engine.

 

It's hot air from the engine being pushed into the cowl, and through your vents. Set the logicon to recirculate instead of outside air and it will solve your issue.

 

This is the way it is set, and I am still getting warm air.

 

Thanks.

It seems odd to me that the "outside air" selector would allow warm air from the engine compartment or anywhere else to come in, but I have seen stranger things...

Ian1.1, I will check the air blend door because I was thinking it might be something like that. I had issues with the one in my Suburban.

I have never had this happen with any of the other 45+ cars I have owned over the years, so it is tough for me to accept this as normal, even for a 22 year old car. However, I searched on this forum but did not find any reference to this issue.

Will report on what I find.

 

When it's warm outside, the slight trickle of outside air wafting through the vents in flow-through mode is not enough to offset the warmth of the rotary engine. The center tunnel area near the shifter gets warmer than it does in a piston-engined car, as does the footwell area. You may just be sensing the increased radiant heat of the rotary vs. other cars. Or like some have suggested, something might in fact be wrong...

 

This is coming through the face level vents on the dash, not in the footwell, so it's not the radiant heat from the tunnel.

I need to look at the path the air flows from the outside to the inside vents, and I think I will find the answer there. Again, I find it hard to believe that they all do this, and it is a design flaw, but it certainly is possible.

 

I mis-informed you You need to have it in recirculate and set to cool. I played with it today while driving on the highway

 

Well, if you're getting warmer-than-outside-temperature air through the upper vents with the temperature selector on cool, that's not the way they all are. Something is wrong. Could be an electronic problem with the logicon, or something physical in the path of the vents.