It's turned cold and wet and my heater doesnt work!!

[GarryO]

Well winter has finally arrived here and I get in my car this morning to go to work and guess what, the heater produces no heat.
I'm in a 2001 Bora V6 4Mo, so complete with the climacontrol system, Aircon works after a fashion but regardless of the setting the heating produces nothing but cold air. what should I be looking at/for so I don't need to wear gloves and a beanie to drive to work up here in the cold country, I dread our first fall of snow if I cannot get things working.

[Cookie28]

Hi mate it sounds like your heater core's died, from what I hear it's a relatively cheap part but the labour is an absolute killer because the whole dash has to come out to replace it. Good luck getting it fixed man

[kaanage]

minus one out there tonight too

[grtuned]

Heater core is a major guess!!! If its was faulty it would be leaking and you would have lost coolant or it would be blocked. First check your control flap which regulates temp. If its faulty most likely scan will pick it up. Also if you got hands on scan tool try a basic settings of the motors this will not work if there is a fault with anything related to a/c system. Third make sure your thermostat and water pump is ok if water is not flowing correctly heated water may not circulate properly though system. Cheers.


Sent from my iPhone using my fingers.

[Woo]

If it's just stopped working (i.e. gone from working fine to dead cold) then I'm with grtuned - heater core would seem unlikely. You'd have a water leak somewhere and if it was blocking up slowly (filling with rust or sediment) you'd have some heat, but it just wouldn't be as hot as normal. Try the easy/most logical stuff first - thermostat, if it's stuck open the car will be running too cold and the heater won't get a chance to get warm. Other symptoms may be that the car is not getting up to normal operating temp on the gauge (I assume it's all Bora's, not just the V5 that run at a fairly constant half-way on the gauge, if yours isn't then the thermostat might be stuffed). I'd suggest a real easy problem, that the cooling system is low on coolant, this can sometimes lead to heater not functioning properly and if you're driving in the cold weather the temp gauge may not change dramatically so you might not know it's low on coolant. But the flaw in that thinking is the same as with the heater core - these things have a low coolant alarm, so unless this is broken you can rule out this possibility. Someone on here may know more about the VW climate control than me, but in Mitsubishi's and Holdens I've seen with climate, the digital read-out operates a motor that actuates a manual temperature adjustment. The control arm on Mitsubishi's used to fall off, so it didn't matter what temp you set, it couldn't adjust. And the other possibility maybe a vacuum leak - do the heater taps on Bora's work on vacuum? I don't know enough Bora-specific info to be sure. Good Luck.

[GarryO]

Don't know if it ever worked for heating before as it has not been needed until now, no leaks and the temps have been running at a constant 90 degrees since the day I bought it. I suspect it could be the taps, will have to run a scan on the car when I get it back from my mechanics (holed the sump the other day, a steel sump guard from ECS is looking like a good investment at the moment.)
Will check the Bentleys pdf I have as well, it may shed some light.

[JustCruisn]

The heater core is behind a door/flap. This could be jammed closed, stopping the hot air. A scan would show the fault, you can also put the climatronic into diagnostics mode, it will show the codes, then search the ross tech wiki.

[balkanac]

you can also put the climatronic into diagnostics mode.

can you tell us how? i have managed to do something with it once (press 3 buttons at once) and it comes up with heaps of info, had no idea what im looking at except for the true speed one

[dubbed]

I found my heater didn't blow hot air when the fan resistor burnt out and blew the fuse on top of the battery. I installed an external resistor and it worked again. I'd check simple things like thermostat and the fan fuse first before pulling the dash. Speaking of which, has anyone pulled the dash before? How hard is it?

[balkanac]

I've replaced the dash on my E30 and that was a major PITA, took 6 hours, i dont even wanna think about how hard it would be on an MK4 with all the motors and wiring