With the colder weather around the corner, it is essential that you diagnose any car heater problems before your car’s HVAC system becomes problematic when you need it the most. If you feel that your car’s heater is not blowing enough warm air, then you must run a few simple checks to bring back the car’s heating capacity.
Check Antifreeze Level
The car’s coolant system, unlike the name suggests, does not only help with only the cooling of the car, but also helps with the heating of the car. Before checking the antifreeze, make sure that the engine is not hot or warmed up. When the radiator fluid gets hot after absorbing the heat, it runs through the engine, along the tubes and piping and towards your car’s cabin compartment.
Then, it enters into another radiator that looks much like the main radiator, but miniature in size. This mini radiator is the heater core, and it holds hot coolant. Then, a fan blows over the heater core so that hot air passes through your vents. The coolant will then go back to the engine to absorb more heat if it cools down.
Therefore, if you do not have enough coolant, the heater core may not receive enough heat. This will result in less heat disposal inside the cabin. Therefore, all you need to do to overcome this issue is check the coolant level by opening the radiator. After opening the radiator cap, make sure that there is enough antifreeze fluid inside. If there is less antifreeze, then you can simply add more.
A better option would be to replace your coolant with antifreeze that is more resilient to colder temperatures. To do this, you will have to drain out all the coolant fluid, flush the coolant tubes by running a cleaning solution, and then close the drain and refill the radiator with new coolant.
Check Coolant Reservoir
Apart from the main coolant system, make sure that the reservoirs are also in place. When you are adding coolant to the reservoirs, make sure that you add it to the cold fill line. Then, you know that the radiator is full, and you can properly test the heating system and see if you have heat.
Other Heater Issues
If you have been driving around in your car for some time and you find that the gauge of the car is stable, but your car is still not providing heat, then it may be because your water pump is not working. Typically, you will find that a leaky water pump’s impeller will stop spinning, and will lower the capacity of the hot coolant entering through your vents. This is because not enough hot coolant enters into your heater core or even the radiator. This will cause the engine to overheat, and you will not get any heat circulating the cabin.
Your car’s HVAC system is a very systematic and thorough process, consisting of many components and parts. Some of the common solutions pertain to coolant levels, air filters, and blower motor replacements.
