I turned on my heat last night and it never got warm, there was a slight difference in temerature from cold to hot, but it was still cold air blowing. Any ideas?

 

hopefully you get an answer cause i have same issue. is your semi warm ??? or no heat at all?

 

are the lines going into the heater core hot? do you feel coolant flowing through them while the car is running?

 

which are those>>??

 

turn it to defrost or to the feet vents and see if it feels hotter. Our cars have an issue with hot air coming out of the main vents.

 

all the hoses are hot. upper and lower does that make a difference???

 

The hose should be hot as at least 90C+ temp coolant is running throught them. Main area to test is the air coming right off the heater core--and that is the feet vents... If the air feels hot then its a common FD issue.

 

My car only blows heat through the lower foot vents. It never gets warm through the dash vents or defroster.
Anyone know how to fix this???

 

The car will NEVER get warm air directed thru the face vents, this is designed in to keep you alert. However, you should get HOT air at the footwells and the defroster vents.

 

^^^Yup.

 

Elite, check your coolant level. 99 times out of 100, that's the problem.

 

Thanks bajaman

 

bajaman is right! Mazda designed the car to blow on the floor not in the face of the driver. so if you got heat on the floor its working as designed.

Jeff

 

All the same, it seems as if there are a significant number of us who have this problem. My coolant level is fine, I've flushed the coolant at least 3 times in the last 12 months for various upgrade reasons, etc. Even with the heat blowing full out the footwell, it only gets warm. Never hot.

edit: I haven't looked into this but I'm thinking that the temperature selector on the dash is electronic and probably causes a stepper motor to actuate a flap in the heater core box or something like that. It certainly doesn't feel like a mechanical switch. Anyway, it could simply be that at the max heat setting, the motor isn't fully actuating and we're never getting full airflow through the heater core. Has anyone investigated this to see if this is the case? It would explain a lot.

 

^ you are right in that there are a LOT of threads about FD heaters not....heating.
I too suspect an electronic gremlin, it is either that or the cores are plugged/half-plugged.