I'm about done repairing my car after getting into an accident. Just need a new hood and to get the body parts painted. I can finally start driving it again now that I got the radiator back into place. However, I noticed my heater is not working. So I decided to put the temp to "HI" and fan to full and all it does is blow cool air out. 10 minutes later and cool air is still coming out. Any idea what is wrong and what I should check before having to visit the dealer about this?

 

FYI, I did the obvious things so far. Made sure the A/C was not on, defrosters not on, switched between recirculate and fresh air, and changed the temps.

 

Nevermind, ran my car to check out whether the strange noise my car makes was the tensioner and when I got inside to turn off the engine, it was warm. Somehow the heater fixed itself or it just could be that I haven't ran the car in so long.

 

The heater is the engine. If the engine doesn't have enough time to get warm, then heat won't come out of the vents.

Now if you actually had a problem, the first thing to do is to check the heater core. There's one line of coolant going into the heater core, and one going out. Check to see if both are warm, and go from there. Sometimes, it's the switch in the dash to flip the valve from cool to hot.

Anyway, you have to warm up the engine before you can make a conclusion as to whether or not the heat works.

 

This happened to me last year.. and it turned out to be I was low on coolant... once I filled that up, the heater started working perfect! Not sure if this would help your situation.. but just a thought

 

If your radiator was out of your car you most likely had an air pocket in the system. They will purge with time and all is well.
Jeff

 

Makes lots of sense lol. I had to remove the radiator to replace some of the hoses that got kinked during the collision I got in. Also, to put the radiator back into the proper place. I lost maybe a pint or so of coolant when disconnecting the hoses so that probably let the air in and stuff.

But at least the heater works now, even with a cold start, it just takes 15 seconds for hot air to come out.