Why is my car blowing cold air
Car Heater Not Blowing Warm Air | Quick Free Fix!
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hello guys and welcome back to another
video now then today i'm going to be
talking about the main reasons
why your heater in your car
may not be working and i'm actually
going to be working on my bmw e65 series
today
but this video is not specific to bmws
it's pretty much the same for all the
cars so i hope
you find this video somewhat helpful but
without further ado let's get outside
and let's get cracking okay then so we
are outside now i'm actually gonna go
ahead and get in the car first of all
and i'm actually gonna
fire the engine up because obviously the
engine has to be running for the
heater to work
okay then so to begin with we'll start
off with some
basic stuff so obviously we have the
climate controls here
we obviously have a temperature gauge on
here as well i believe this
is in celsius but in your car it may be
in
fahrenheit you know we just want to make
sure that this is
all the way to the warm so in our case
it is
2 26 or 27 degrees
celsius so we'll do that on both of them
so it's going to give us the best
chance possible and obviously we have
the
motor here which controls the velocity
of the air coming out
and obviously you want to make sure that
your vents are open as well so as you
can see
all the vents are open all of the way
okay and so that is the basic stuff out
the way then let's say we
take it for a drive you know we've been
driving for
you know 15 20 minutes or so and you
know we think the car must be up to
operating temperature now
and we noticed that we still do not have
hot air blowing from the vents
now i'm actually going to step outside
and head
into the engine bay and i'll show you a
few things that
is worth pointing out and it may
actually help you
diagnosing why you are not getting the
hot air coming
from your vents so then the first and
probably
most common cause why you may not be
getting hot
air blown from your vents is actually
because
your coolant or antifreeze may not be
getting
up to temperature in the first place and
if we take a look
down here we see a thermostat this
basically opens and closes at
around typically around 90 degrees
celsius this obviously allows coolant to
flow from the engine to
other areas of the car for example
to the heater matrix and of course if
the thermostat
is faulty then we are not going to get
the hot air because we are not even
going to get the coolant warm enough to
in fact heat the air now the easiest way
of telling if you have a faulty
thermostat
or not is just checking your temperature
gauge
if you do not have an analog temperature
gauge there is many ways you can
enter the secret menu especially on a
bmw
you can enter the secret menu and then
check your coolant temperature
that way it should typically be up to
operating temperature
after around 15 to 20 minutes of
moderate
driving if you are still nowhere near
that 90 degrees
celsius mark then there is a good chance
that your thermostat
is at fault and it's also worth
mentioning that
some models of cars have multiple
thermostat in our case this car only has
just the one but there is sometimes a
separate thermostat
for the egr system or for the
transmission
so it is worth you know checking to see
if all
of your thermostats are working
correctly the next common problem then
why
your heater may not be blown at hot air
is if
your heater core is actually blocked
so if we take a look down here and i
appreciate it's pretty
hard to see but we can see the firewall
and we have a couple of pipes
running from there so we have one
running to the firewall that's going to
the heater core
then we have a return one that comes
from the heater core
now if you haven't done a coolant flush
in a long time or if it's been a good
number of years before
it has had a coolant flush there's a
good chance that that is going to be
pretty
stopped up and if you take a look in the
coolant tank you can see that our
coolant
is very clean and that's because we have
done a coolant flush
in the last six months we've done a full
coolant flush and got all of the old
coolant
and crud that was built up over the
years in the coolant system
and we flushed out with some nice new
proper coolant and so that's one of the
main reasons
why it is important to do a coolant
flush because if you don't
you get a lot of the old breakdown
corrosion
all sitting in the heater core and that
can
make it block up and that's one of the
main reasons why people complain of
their heaters not blowing out hot air
another reason then while your heater
may not be blown out
hot air is if your coolant level is
too low maybe you have some sort of leak
or maybe you are in fact burning coolant
which
is a much bigger problem than you
ideally want but as you can see on here
we have a level so we have a max and we
have a min
obviously you want it to be somewhere
between the
two of them obviously mine is mine is
just between the minimum
and the maximum if you have a low
coolant or if you have
a leak then obviously you're not going
to get the proper flow of coolant to the
heat core
and that's in fact not going to heat the
air that you want
i've actually had a situation before
where i was driving it was a very cold
morning
i just noticed that my heaters just went
out completely it stopped blowing hot
air
and it only blew out cold air like
almost instantly
and that's when i knew i had a problem
because my
temperature gauge was in fact going up
and that's when i knew
for a fact i had a leak and what
actually happened was
one of the coolant pipes here had
actually split
and that's that's when i knew i had
quite a big problem and obviously had to
pull over immediately another reason
why you may not be getting hot air
coming out of your vents while your
heater may not be working correctly
is if we take a look down here we have a
heater
control valve and this essentially
controls the amount
of coolant going from the engine
to the heater core so if this thing
isn't working correctly if we have a
fault code for this
then that may be the problem for your
heater not working essentially
and for the final common problem in the
engine bay then
would just be for the incorrect mix when
it comes to the
coolant anti-freeze so obviously you
want to
make sure that you follow the factory
specifications when it comes to your
coolant antifreeze mix
and you want to make sure that you are
choosing the correct mix for your
climate
so if you are living in a climate which
is
minus 20 degrees celsius then obviously
you need to make sure you have
a high anti-freeze mix which is
appropriate for your climate
likewise if you live in a very warm
climate you're not going to need
much anti-freeze at all and you're going
to need more coolant so
it's worth mentioning that you need to
make sure that you have a proper
anti-freeze coolant mix because if you
don't then you may be running too
cold or in fact too warm and i'm going
to actually take you
inside of the car where i'm actually
going to show you a common problem
especially with
bmws where people cannot seem to get hot
air
blowing from their vents okay then so
this
is going to be relevant for bmws
especially bmws that
have the idrive system so obviously we
can see we
are at the main menu right here but then
if we
go ahead and scroll down to
settings and then if we
was to scroll down to climate
and then if we was to select the first
one which is a ventilation
temperature we can see
that we actually have another dial here
so if i switch the ignition on we can
see that we actually have
another dial which we can actually
toggle with the idrive
wheel so as we saw you know the needle
was
pointing towards the cold now if this is
the case
no matter how much heat you apply to
this dial here if this is fully on the
cold
you're not going to get hot air blowing
from your vents
so it's worth checking it's worth going
into your hard drive settings into the
ventilation temperature settings
and making sure that this is pointing to
the relevant heat settings obviously if
we want it as hot as possible
we're going to have it pointing all the
way to the hot if we want it cold so
for example we want our ac running we're
going to have it point in
there and if we want it somewhere in the
middle you know a good mix of the heat
and cool then we are going to want it
somewhere in
the middle but let's say for example
it's a very cold morning
we want to get the car as hot as
possible as quick as possible
you want to have that all the way on the
heat have the
both sides of the
climb control dials set to the hottest
and then obviously control the fan speed
just there
now this is really something that is not
that
obvious from factory you know if you see
climate controlled dials on here you
would expect to just turn these
to the relevant temperature and that
would be it pretty much but
the fact that you actually have to go
into the i drive settings
to the climate settings and then to the
ventilation temperature and then
obviously you can set the ventilation
temperature
you know it's quite a bit of work it's
not the most obvious thing from factory
to be honest
but if you have checked everything that
i have previously mentioned so you know
you've checked
these dials all the way on the heat you
know you have
taken your car for a nice decent drive
to get up to what you think is the
operating temperature
you know maybe you went ahead and
checked the coolant temperature and it
is
around the 90 degrees and
then you find out you're still not
getting hot air blowing from your vents
there's a good chance
that this is your problem okay then so i
hope this video
has been somewhat helpful i hope it's
helped to get your
heaters in your car working again
if it has been somewhat helpful and you
have enjoyed it please remember to give
it a like leave a comment
down below subscribe if you have not
already done so because i've got a lot
more videos like this to come on the way
and i will see you all in that next one
peace
you