Floobydust

On my 2002 LX 470 the automatic climate control takes bloody forever to start and blow warm air. Here on the frozen tundra of New England (fortunately this year, only recently frozen), you need heat as soon as you can get it. If I manually set the fan to blow air (select Medium or High), I get warm air within minutes. If I wait for the automatic control, the engine temp guage shows "normal" and the heater fan doesn't blow for quite some time. It seems kind of inane for the system to wait this long to start heating since there is clearly hot coolant available in the heater core. While I can be comfortable using this "fix", this kind of defeats the purpose of having an "automatic" climate control.

Has anyone else (in cold climates) experienced this? Does anyone know if it can be adjusted? Or is this more likely to be a problem with my particular car.

Thanks,

- FD

ArmyJoe

I have to agree, but I am sure someone will tell us why. Jim? I believe it has to hit a certian temp first... but not sure.

1loudLX

The coolant has to get to a certain temp before it starts to automaticly start heating the car. Its saving you from blasting cold air on you at startup. Its honestly not that bad. But if you Idle your car to warm it up for 10mins and start driving, dont expect it to be blasting with warm air. Idling takes forever to warm your car up. The best way to get that heat blasting is to Start your car and wait a couple seconds for oil pressure to come up, and the go. Just drive easy and dont put too much throttle in. It will start to warm up alot faster that way.

PRSUIT460

iTrader: (3)

Does it seem like your engine coolant is cooler than it normally is by looking at the gauge? Your thermostat in the cooling system could be bad causing it to take longer to heat up and the air coming out is not as warm as it used to be.

_JP_

heated seat warms up in 2 minutes. i was roasting this AM in 10 minutes max. outside temp approx 40.

jp

LXotic

My heated seat warms up in like 1min at HI

Calbo

Compared to my wife's Bimmer, the Lexus's seats take a lot longer to warm up. I guess our leather's real, BMW's leather is synthetic. hahaha j/k.
It could also be because some pressure (in the form of weight) is needed to press the heating element against the seat cushions for the surface to warm up... and my wife simply isn't heavy enough. She's one of those tiny Vietnamese women.

HAVOCK

AAAHHHH! Remote start..... The only way to go.. Leave the heat on the on position leave the heated seats setting on high and drive. LOL However 1loudLX vbmenu_register("postmenu_2364908", true); is correct it's even in the manual let it run for a couple seconds then just go the coolant has to reach a certain temp before the thermostat allows passage of hot coolant to the heater core.

V8_Fan

I believe the auto climate control won't blow any heat until the coolant is sufficiently hot, so the driver doesn't get blasted by cold air.

When I changed my coolant a month ago, it was 50F outside and took forever for the coolant in the block and heater cores to heat up enough so the thermostat would open and allow the hot coolant to flow into the radiator and cold radiator coolant to enter the engine. I had to rev the engine at 2000 rpm (this is like driving 55mph) for maybe 2 min after the engine had been idling for 10-15 min at 700rpm to get it hot enough. The heater was blowing hot air long before then, but the thermostat was still closed until I revved the engine (I could see the clear, cold distilled water in the radiator turn pink and warm). Just comes to show you how efficient the LX/LC is at cooling the engine. After all, these vehicles are made so you can run the A/C in 130F (the normal summer temps in S. Africa and Middle East) , the coolant capacity is 16 qts, and only about 6.5 qts of that is in the radiator. If you drain the radiator and left V-block, you get 11 qts of coolant. The right block is too difficult to drain (ATF lines cover the bolt, plus i was too lazy to remove the ATF line bracket :-) ).