During the fall my car heater felt like it heated up pretty good. Now that it's winter, it only starts to heat up on the highway. When my car idles it immediately gets cold in there.
2007-12-02 16:07:59 · 6 answers · asked by ROLLIE K 1 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Maintenance & Repairs
Hi - You did not say whether it is a 6 or 4 cylinder. 6 cylinders take longer to heat up. Also, it is winter - it is only natural to take longer to heat up when compared to fall.
You did not mention the time it takes you to get to the highway - if your like me it's about 5 to 10 min. During this time the engine is only reved intermittantly before braking. Not the most effective thing for warming it up quickly. When you get to the the highway, you rev it continously - it naturally heats up a lot faster at this point.
When idling in winter for more than approximately 5 min, many cars don't generate the same heat the engine does when being reved while driving. The heated air soon starts to lose it's heat!
It sounds to me like something fairly normal in all the cars I've had or been in. You possibly don't need any more complicated form of assesment.
Hope This Helps.
2007-12-02 16:48:34 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
Well you have thermostat, pressure cap, possibly bottom hose on radiator "sucking flat" at high volume warer flow requirement, -- on radiator hose try squeezing lower radiator hose (preferably cold), - to see if there is a "spring" inside to hold hose expanded, - if spring "rots out", and if hose soft enough they will indeed "suck in flat". This can be aggrivated by a radaiator that is partially plugged and not letting water through fast enough to supply the pump too!
This brings us to the radiator itself, -- the faster the engine runs, the more heat it produces, - if the water doesn't dissipate enough heat through radiator, such as plugged radiator core, - or possibly way too much trash and bugs in front of radiator so that air can't flow through freely,--- there may be a point that you are producing more heat than the radiator can remove! No mention of make of car, but some "real bright people" produced a bunch of water pumps with plastic impellers, - these could brake a few fins off partially, or even have the impeller "let go" of fit on WP shaft, and then not pump enough water, or not pump at all!
Or you could have the problem I had with wife's car during the summer, - it woud be fine on a 10 mile drive, but at about 25 miles, it would start getting hot, -- if you slowed down 15-20 mph for about 2 miles it would drop back to normal. Then it got to where it would blow water overboard when driving 25 miles, (not a lot at any time, - but some). Well it slowly got worse till it was at high range mark when my wife drove it the 10 miles to work every day! By this time of course I knew it had a bad headgasket. Was leaking between two center cyllinders (4 cyl engine), - so it only blew compression into water jacket area.... No water in oil, - no oil in water, no water leaking back ito cylinders. Driving slow allowed the "bubbles" to escape fast enough that they just went out through the pressure cap, and the engine stayed full of water! But when engine running fast enough to drive car at 65, - the water jacket filled up with air and pushed all the water out!
This can make engine hot pretty rapidly of course, and the worse the leak the faster the problem shows up!
Well we watched the temp gauge, and shut it down soon enough each time to keep form ruining head ,- so I pulled head off and changed gasket (a month ago), - no damage to head or engine, so no machine work, - new gaskets, thermostat (which I didn't need, but did anyway), and anti-freeze, as well as a couple small pieces of hose cost me about $60. Of course I did the work myself, so my labor was "free"!
2007-12-03 00:53:48 · answer #2 · answered by guess78624 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
its either low on coolant or you have an air pocket in the heater core,or the water pump could be going bad on it,causing it not to circulate real good,a clogged radiator will also cause this,or a bad thermostat as you can see there are many possible causes for this, a repair shop can probably find and repair the problem a lot faster for you,good luck on it.
2007-12-03 00:21:17 · answer #3 · answered by dodge man 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Low Coolant and/or Thermostat Stuck Open!
2007-12-03 02:21:35 · answer #4 · answered by sidecar0 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
need to replace your thermostat they are between 3-10 bucks
2007-12-03 03:08:35 · answer #5 · answered by wditt2 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Thermostat is bad. It is not closing to keep the engine temp up.
2007-12-03 00:13:43 · answer #6 · answered by renpen 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋