heater
 

does your heater SUCK?

I wish the stock temperature gauge didn't suck balls, I wonder if my thermostat is siezed open.

this morning it was rather cool (upper 40's or low 50's I'm guessing) and driving my brother to school I noticed that the heater in my car, well, is a bag of shit.

Lukewarm air came out at best, though there was a lot of it it wasn't very hot!

This is a pretty sharp contrast to all the 2nd and 1st gens I've owned which have had AWESOME heaters.
Something wrong here perhaps?

dude you need to clean out your heater core. It's not hard at all. You're probebly due for a coolent change. If you do it your self, drain the coolent, disconnect the lower radiator hose, and on the bottom of the filler neck you'll see a smaller hose running off to the left into the fire wall. that smaller hose is the feeder hose into the heater core. be careful with it and dissconnect it from the lower coolent pipe (off the filler neck) and use a water hose on LOW pressure at first and run water through it. it's most likely pluged up. if you use high pressure you run the risk of cracking the core under the dash!!!!!! not fun. it migt be a good idea to find the return line from the heater core that feeds back into the engine and drain the goo that comes out into a bucket, that way it's forever outa yer engine. and slowly turn up the pressure untill you get a good flow of water. then re-connect everthing and fill and get the air bubbles out as normal. Or the second option is to get your local macanic to do a coolent flush and fill. it should do the same thing. I do all the work i can on my and brothers, and friends cars. just remember to use low pressure at first. (someone did this same thing with a 12 volt bildge pump for boats and let it run hot water and radiator flush though it for a few hours). do a search but ether one will work.

I didn't know that FD's had issues with them gunking up!

Cool, I'll try that.

I just flushed my coolant about 3 days ago. :)

You said the guage sucks balls... Is it reading around half way up? If it has a stuck open thermostat, you won't get warm air. If you are stopped and the car is idleing for a while, the temp guage should increase and you should feel a difference in temp. I hated my 1/2 hour drive to work when mine crapped out. Sitting in line at the gate for 5 min it would warm right up, drive off it would cool back down.

yeah, the gauge goes to halfway.

a couple years back I had a GSL-SE with a stuck thermostat, but its temperature gauge was a little more realistic and I could tell that that's what the problem is!

I rarely let the car sit and idle, I should try that.

I know that when I went on a spirited drive this morning the heater output improved significantly.

I guess it dosen't really matter, I'll replace the thermostat sometime over the winter but it's being stored until spring in 3 days.