freezing!!! 1992 320i

[charlie askew]

can anyone help? complete novice mechanic (with hayes manual) just purchased 320i, car was a decent buy and driving my first ever rear wheel drive car is great but for price purchased litle faults where to be expected. my main prority at the moment is heat! regardless of temp settings on dials (aircon model) all that blows out is ice!! manual mentions setting drivers side to maximum setting for emergency heating if elect. heat. cont. fails but i still get frozen.. any clues (preferably cheap ones due to prasent circ.) would be much appreciated.

[M3 Mitch]

On most BMW cars there is a valve that shuts off coolant flow to the heater core when the temp control is set to "cold", this valve can be heard to operate when you cycle the temp from max cold, when you have made a few degrees of rotation you should hear the "thunk" of the valve opening. This may not apply to your car - is it an E36 or E46 car?

Anyway be systematic - first, does the car run at normal coolant temp, temp gauge at about 12 o'clock? If not, likely your thermostat is stuck open.

Feel of the heater hoses going to and from the heater core. With the car idling at normal temp, and the heater turned to hot and blower set to "2" or "3" one hose should be noticably hotter than the other. If both are hot, something is blocking air flow through the heater, if both are cold I'd suspect there is no coolant flow to the heater.

The Bentley manual is worth the extra money, you will buy it eventually so go ahead and get it...

[charlie askew]

thanxs for response, car is e36 version, temp runs at exactly 12 o clock. so dont think it is thermostat.will check pipes for different temps. and listen for "clunk" when switched from cold

[chim_knee]

I know even less than yourself so I'm not sure this'll even be relevant but, my dad used to have an '87 E28 520 and the heating had its own radiator. This failed and caused only freezing cold air to be blown out of the "heater". He got a refurb unit in the end. HTH