heating without air con..

[hippy]

i'm driving home late at night when its really cold outside and all windows are closed (i think) .. anyways i notice that heat is coming in on top of my feet as if the air con was set to heat up my feet ... but its not ON ... climate control is OFF but heat air is coming onto my feet .. is this normal??

[sfitzy]

What I found was when I hit the temp up/down buttons on the climate control when the system was off, the temp in the display when the system was turned back on changed. I think there is a default temp that the car maintains irrespective if the climate control is on or off.

[Doctor]

Yes you can still change the temp even though the a/c i s off. If you want to see what temp when its off, press the button that changes the direction of the airflow.

[Cake]

hippy

mine does the same thing, i was thinking... wtf? why is my car heating up so much... then i realised it was the aircon, could feel the air on my legs. u just need to set a temp

[hippy]

so i can also set an "off" temp?? how strange for something to be working when u turn it off

[(B1) MR_fanny]

mine does the same thing.........just set it to 18deg and turn it off....i assume setting it to this just closes the vents to from the engine.

[PuppaDuck]

You know what that is ???

when you have any temperature set other than the coldest, eg. 18 degrees, you are letting the water from your engine enter your heater core, which is the internal radiator used for your cabin fan...

so even though the fan isn't blowing the air through the heater core, there is still a lot of heat passing through the heater core in your cabin...hence higher cabin temperatures...

next time it happens, switch the fan on, close that valve (by switching the temp to cold) and then turn off the fan...and after a few seconds the heater core will cool off and you won't get any heat...

if you have high engine water temperature warnings, and you turned your heater on to hot, it is basically using 2 radiators to keep your engine water cool...

John Candy used that theory in Canon Ball...remember when he was racing with the BMW with that chick and the crazy truck guy was up his ass ?

He threw the heater on and the car picked up enough power for him to get away...