During the coldest days of the winter I discovered that I was not getting any heat on the driver's side of my car. At first I thought it was because my commute to work was too short to properly heat up the car until the day I drove my other car to work and had a toasty interior before I was 4 blocks away from my house.
Most of the people complaining about a similar issue had dual climate but my car does not have it. I found a video of someone who replaced his heater valve and it looked straight forward and cheap enough for me to go ahead and order the $22 part just so I can have some heat in case another cold spell came through before the end of winter.
Here's a picture of the new valve installed on my car. It's located under the hood on the passenger side mounted to the firewall. Replacement was about 30 minutes.
Here's a few of my tips for free diagnosis so you don't need to buy a cheap replacement part if you come across the same issue.
this valve has a very limited range of motion. The arm (as pictured) in the 9:00 position is full warm with 12:00 position being full cool. If you're experiencing a problem, try pulling off that little wire and manually moving the lever to the 9:00 position and see if your heat situation changes. The motor that controls that wire also moves an air mix door and is located near the gas pedal inside the cabin.
When I pulled off my old valve, I discovered that it moves fairly freely from open to closed so I figured the problem is either elsehwere in the HVAC system or that cable is mis-adjusted. To set the length properly, I turned on the engine and set the temp to full hot and clamped that cable down such that the arm is in the 9:00 position.
Double check that on full cold the cable retracts enough to pull the arm to the 12:00 position.
My heat feels hotter now but the left most vent still does not get hot enough. I'm not sure if the new valve and cable adjustment will make any difference when the temperature outside is 0 or less. I did take out the lower dash cover on the driver's side and look at the operation of the air mix motor which appears to be working through the full range so I'm a bit at a loss but will hold judgement for a really cold day... perhaps next winter since this one is just about over for us in the south.
EDIT:
November 2018
The heater control valve helped a little but I still froze on the coldest days of of the 2017/2018 winter. One particular 10 degree morning when the windshield refused to defrost all the way to work and I knew I had to do something about this car sooner rather than later. Luckily, the rest of last winter was mild enough to not suffer too much.
With the winter of 2018/2019 about to start, I took advantage of the last warm weekend and replaced the thermostat with an aftermarket Beck Arnley that I picked up from an online parts seller ($35, I know, throwing money at a problem is not the best way to fix a problem). The thermostat made absolutely no difference, so I bit the bullet and performed the last possible fix that could cause a partial heat loss.
I struggled with the heater core hoses and clamps and finally managed to remove them where they attached to the engine. I carefully inserted the hose from the heater control valve into an empty container and applied some pressurized air to clear out the remaining coolant in the heater core. Only a few bits of dirt came out and then I attached a garden hose to the outlet hose and ran some water through it, then some air to clear it out and finally swapped directions and flushed it with water and air again.
Besides a few small flakes of dirt and a little sand (how the heck does sand get into the coolant????), there was not much trapped in the heater core, but I'm definitely getting serious heat on the driver's side now even though I didn't bother using any heater core cleaning solutions.
Not sure how small the coolant passages are that a little bit of dirt could cause such a heating issue, but maybe the heater core was just never properly bled. I parked the car on a slight incline in my driveway and filled the radiator. I partially closed the radiator and let the car run until the fan turned on, then I refilled it and repeated the procedure 2 more times until the radiator was still full after the engine cooled and I checked the coolant level.
Looking forward to driving it in the cold now and also, I can let one of the kids take it without worrying about freezing to death in the northern climates.
Most of the people complaining about a similar issue had dual climate but my car does not have it. I found a video of someone who replaced his heater valve and it looked straight forward and cheap enough for me to go ahead and order the $22 part just so I can have some heat in case another cold spell came through before the end of winter.
Here's a picture of the new valve installed on my car. It's located under the hood on the passenger side mounted to the firewall. Replacement was about 30 minutes.
Here's a few of my tips for free diagnosis so you don't need to buy a cheap replacement part if you come across the same issue.
this valve has a very limited range of motion. The arm (as pictured) in the 9:00 position is full warm with 12:00 position being full cool. If you're experiencing a problem, try pulling off that little wire and manually moving the lever to the 9:00 position and see if your heat situation changes. The motor that controls that wire also moves an air mix door and is located near the gas pedal inside the cabin.
When I pulled off my old valve, I discovered that it moves fairly freely from open to closed so I figured the problem is either elsehwere in the HVAC system or that cable is mis-adjusted. To set the length properly, I turned on the engine and set the temp to full hot and clamped that cable down such that the arm is in the 9:00 position.
Double check that on full cold the cable retracts enough to pull the arm to the 12:00 position.
My heat feels hotter now but the left most vent still does not get hot enough. I'm not sure if the new valve and cable adjustment will make any difference when the temperature outside is 0 or less. I did take out the lower dash cover on the driver's side and look at the operation of the air mix motor which appears to be working through the full range so I'm a bit at a loss but will hold judgement for a really cold day... perhaps next winter since this one is just about over for us in the south.
EDIT:
November 2018
The heater control valve helped a little but I still froze on the coldest days of of the 2017/2018 winter. One particular 10 degree morning when the windshield refused to defrost all the way to work and I knew I had to do something about this car sooner rather than later. Luckily, the rest of last winter was mild enough to not suffer too much.
With the winter of 2018/2019 about to start, I took advantage of the last warm weekend and replaced the thermostat with an aftermarket Beck Arnley that I picked up from an online parts seller ($35, I know, throwing money at a problem is not the best way to fix a problem). The thermostat made absolutely no difference, so I bit the bullet and performed the last possible fix that could cause a partial heat loss.
I struggled with the heater core hoses and clamps and finally managed to remove them where they attached to the engine. I carefully inserted the hose from the heater control valve into an empty container and applied some pressurized air to clear out the remaining coolant in the heater core. Only a few bits of dirt came out and then I attached a garden hose to the outlet hose and ran some water through it, then some air to clear it out and finally swapped directions and flushed it with water and air again.
Besides a few small flakes of dirt and a little sand (how the heck does sand get into the coolant????), there was not much trapped in the heater core, but I'm definitely getting serious heat on the driver's side now even though I didn't bother using any heater core cleaning solutions.
Not sure how small the coolant passages are that a little bit of dirt could cause such a heating issue, but maybe the heater core was just never properly bled. I parked the car on a slight incline in my driveway and filled the radiator. I partially closed the radiator and let the car run until the fan turned on, then I refilled it and repeated the procedure 2 more times until the radiator was still full after the engine cooled and I checked the coolant level.
Looking forward to driving it in the cold now and also, I can let one of the kids take it without worrying about freezing to death in the northern climates.
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