Heater blowing cold air...

[beaver700]

Gday
Just wondering if anyone can help me....
I started up my car one morning to find that my temperature gauge wasnt working properly. The needle only went up slightly after being warmer up....

I put it down for a faulty temp sensor, until I noticed I didnt get any hot air out of the heater....

Does anyone know what could be the problem?...

Any help appreciated,


Cheers

[nicbeer]

Check your thermostat and also you have coolant in the system.

Nic

[stoo2]

That doesn't sound good, I would have thought that if your thermostat had gone you'd boil it and would know about it due to overheating pretty quick.
It makes sense though, it can't be a coincidence.

[Vineboy]

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but it could also be the coolant has drained out and the temp guage is only reading the air temp in the passages not the coolent temp. This happened to me-----> cracked head.

[stoo2]

Surely that'd be the first thing you'd check?

[Vineboy]

Are you still blowing white smoke?

[lay80n]

That doesn't sound good, I would have thought that if your thermostat had gone you'd boil it and would know about it due to overheating pretty quick.
It makes sense though, it can't be a coincidence.

Thermostat could be jammed open, causeing cold running and slow warm-up.

Layto....

[Meteor]

Mine had the same thing, thermostat had stuck at full open. Took it out, gave it a fiddle so it could move normally again, put it back in and it worked fine.

[beaver700]

Gday
Thanks for your replies.

Ive noticed the following things....

* The coolant level is full to the brim.
* vineboy - the car only seems to blow white smoke whel going down hills whe n I use compression braking for some reason... (
* It takes ages to warm it up... the needle goes up more when idling and not moving ( probably a normal thing ) but confirms the temp gauge is working OK.
* The auto choke keeps 'adjusting itself' higher even after I tamper with it... its sits on 2000 + revs when idling on a cold morning....
* The temp gauge / cold heater problems only started when I was travelling home from northern NSW and just passed thru some mountainous territory.... (next monring it didnt work..)

Anyhow, thanks for all your suggestions and pointers. I will check the thermostat today


Cheers, Beaver

[raqmup]

Hiya, as Layto said, jammed thermo may be the cause, also- have you ever used a radiator stop leak product like bars leaks or chemi-weld? If you have, and have left it in the system for a while, it will play havoc with your cooling/heating systems. Your heater will cease to work due to the heater tap being blocked with the granules that are in those products. Your thermo will also be jammed up with the crap as well. Just a thought. I used chemi-weld to solve a leaky heater pipe on my 1.3L Barina when I was building up my Sierra and both of these probs occured- warming up issues, the whole lot. I'd recomend changing your thermo & thermo gasket to be on the safe side (they're fairly inexpensive). Before you do that, however, run a radiator/coolant flush through the system, drain 'er out & replace the coolant along with a new thermo & gasket. (Nulon or Wynns are good radiator flushes). Hope that may help.