Another URGENT heater question !!!!

[toyroom]

When the heater is set to cold, do you get slightly warm air coming from the driver side windscreen vent whilst the other vents (passenger windscreen and both footwells) are cold ? Could the water pipes be heating the air duct on the driver's side ? Presumably the valve is closed as the other three wouldn't be cold. It's been so long since I had a working heater that I can't remember whether this was the case !!! Thanks everyone !----JW

>> Edited by toyroom on Saturday 26th November 00:08

[LooseCannon]

Mine always has a "bleed" to the screen, annoying as f***k it is too. The manual says it should do that, god knows why anyone would want hot air blasted in their face, but there you go. Not sure what it means when its only coming out of half of them though. Hose off somewhere???

[toyroom]

The reason that the air in your face is hot is that the valve is slightly open so that hot water is passing slowly through th pipe to the matrix and then through the matrix itself. The fan is cooling the matrix but not the pipe. The driver side windscreen vent duct passes adjacent to the water pipe for about 12cm and heat passes from the pipe to the air in the duct. The passenger windsceen vent and the two footwells are heated by the matrix only.
You therefore have the same problem as I. The solution is to adjust the cable (pre '98 cars only. Post '98 are electronic)to give 95% hot but 100% cold OR, more correctly, bend the heater valve operating arm to allow the valve to "top out" just before the cable and operating arm reach the end of their travel, similar to how a clutch pedal has a bit of free play when at the top.
The main problem is how the hell you get to the valve to bend the operating arm !!!

>> Edited by toyroom on Sunday 27th November 23:16

[toyroom]

There is another potential reason for your problem. You say that you have hot air on your face. This isn't coming from the face level vent rather than the demist one is it ?? If it is, then your footweel and face hoses have been swapped. I know this because mine were when it came back from the dealer !!! £4,000 spent and I still had to spend Saturday afternoon replacing half the bits !!