Is your car an igloo or a sauna ? Heatershite

[captain_70s]

Dolly 1300 - takes ages to get hot, blower is feeble, especially for demisting. Can set to "screen" which just about clears the screen or "screen and car" which roasts whichever of your feet is closest the transmission tunnel and won't clear the screen.

Setting it to cold gives lukewarm air to your feet. Thank God for the fresh air vents and quarter lights...

 

Dolly 1850 - Same setup as the 1300 but it actually works. Also features a vent in the centre console for maximum knee warming.

Cold air delivery is just as naff as the 1300.

 

Acclaim - Warms up quickly, demists well, good range of vents across the dash which can also be set to provide fresh air.

Has modern style settings, feet, head and feet, head and demist.

Fan speeds all make sense and the cool setting is actually decent. Winrar!

[SierraMikeHotel]

The only two that spring to mind are, surprise surprise, both Citroëns.

 

My XM had split heating for the driver and passenger. The driver's side worked just fine, but the passenger one didn't work at all. My then-girlfriend just took to keeping her coat and gloves on, then inexplicably dumped me.

 

My CX was always roasting hot. I never did decide if the heater was stuck on, or if the heat was coming off the transmission tunnel (C-Matic).

[stonedagain]

My B5 Passat's heater is great and heats up quickly for an old direct injection diesel -it's putting out warm air before I get to the motorway which is just a couple of miles away. It's climate control with lots of flaps and buttons but still works after nearly 20 years.

 

The best heaters I've experienced were in XUD powered cars, blast furnace level heat that made the car interior toasty even when it's -20°c outside.

 

The worst was in a modern Sprinter, at work we would sometimes have to sit in the cab while linesmen did their thing, the temperature gauge would plummet with the engine at idle resulting in little to no heat and even at running temperature the heater was shit.

 

I travelled through Europe in midsummer with some friends in a Peugeot 407, temperatures up to 40°c with the heater stuck on! That's put me off any Peugeots beyond x06 for life.

Your Passat will have the auxiliary coolant heater. 3 glow plugs fitted in a alloy housing at the back of the head.

[Tamworthbay]

I think that depends on whether you've still got the proper original heat exchangers fitted with about a million alloy fins

or the total wank efforts containing three thick 'fins' that they now sell to replace them.

 

Nope, even with the originals and all sealed they are shit, just slightly less shit

[Lacquer Peel]

Your Passat will have the auxiliary coolant heater. 3 glow plugs fitted in a alloy housing at the back of the head.

Yes it does, I'm surprised it still works.

[MikeR]

after owning a Fiat 126 in one of the worst winters ..........

 

 

any heater is a godsend !

 

 

even on a diesel car ....

[chadders]

Worst was the vw camper van, how that piss poor excuse of a heating system was ever supposed to cope with a winter is beyond me.

 

Even after everything has been replaced, even with Heat Exchangers with loads of fins, ours may waft a bit of warmth occasionally, providing it's above 15 degrees C outside.

 

It's probably warmer skiing behind in the snow with the engine lid open.

[bub2006]

What's it like it your Reliant

The trike not so warm but when they had a body on then yes very toasty

[Tamworthbay]

Even after everything has been replaced, even with Heat Exchangers with loads of fins, ours may waft a bit of warmth occasionally, providing it's above 15 degrees C outside.

 

It's probably warmer skiing behind in the snow with the engine lid open.

Yup, that matches my experience

[oldcars]

The trike not so warm but when they had a body on then yes very toasty

Interesting, mine is terrible in winter.

[PhilA]

Me '04 Fuckus is decently efficient - warms up promptly, and makes using the car in winter a relatively pain free experience. There's the slight gripe that actually setting the "dial" to a position that keeps it at one comfy temperature is tricky. Esp. on motorways. I find I get too warm, then back it off too far and get too cold. So pendulum between those two states for e.g. an entire three hour journey. Bit annoying.

 

See, that's what I don't understand. I've had a few cars with thermostatic heater controls (i.e. the dial doesn't just control the hot/cold blend directly) and they've been fantastic- set and forget. The Renault does not and I would forever have to pfaff on cold days with the temperature.

 

Apparently the heater in the Chieftain is good. There's a huge matrix under the driver's seat to deliver hot air to the floor of the car for all occupants to enjoy*. It also has thermostatic heater controls. In 1951.

 

Phil

[Zelandeth]

Hottest heater I've ever had is in the Lada. It's actually painful to put your hand too close to the vents. Unfortunately the blower motor is stuffed, so it is rather reliant on forward motion to clear the windows. I'll probably be standing on my head to sort that soon.

 

Very surprised by the heater in the van. It also suffers from a non-working fan, but the supernova levels of heat delivered into the cab anywhere above walking pace suggest (even with the currently missing thermostat) that availability of warmth isn't going to be an issue. No idea what the gas powered heater in the back is like yet.

 

Xantia gets hot within seconds (usually have warm air from the vents before the suspension has sorted itself out), and produces a lot of heat. Sadly it's a poor system with regards to its ability to demist the windows though, even with the air con going.

 

Saab 900 probably gets the award for the best all round system though. It got plenty hot, allowed you to have cool air to the face irrespective of other settings, and just seemed to get the air exactly where it was needed so that demisting etc was never a problem. Automatic heated seats provided gentle background warmth for the few mins it took the heater to warm up.

 

I remember being very surprised by how effective the heater in our old Panda was. For all it was noisy, it worked supremely well, eclipsing the efforts we'd seen in far more expensive cars.

[danthecapriman]

Capri - shit! Tiny ancient heater matrix and it just didn’t work all that well. Not helped by one of the control cables being broken so it only worked on certain settings, all of which were warm only.

I’ve fitted a larger mk3 matrix into the original mk1 style Smiths heater box and fixed everything else recently though so fingers crossed there’ll be at least some improvement once it’s refitted in the car.

 

Mercury- superb. Lots of settings and temperature settings etc and it all works well. Heats up quick, gets properly hot if set to max and is great if you need to defrost or demist.

 

Transit - good. But, as the vans now a camper I’ve removed the cab bulkhead which means the little heater now seems out of its depth a bit trying to heat the huge interior space! It does do the job still though. It’s ok.

 

Volvo - absolutely brilliant! Gets warm very quickly and has a good range of settings to get the temperature comfortable. Defrost and demist especially good.

 

The worst by some significant margin though is my 66 reg Sprinter. It’s dreadful. Takes an absolute age to warm up and basically does fuck all until it’s been run at motorway speed for some distance which means it’s useless for winter demisting or defrost.

It’s so bad that it actually freezes on the inside of the windows. They fog up very easily too, any slight damp (like a British winter!) and it mists up inside badly and takes forever to clear. No air con either which must be unique in this day and age! It makes my 40+ year old stuff look good!

[forddeliveryboy]

The daily V70 is typical VAGTDi shite at warming up fast on frosty morning such is the lack of spare heat, when it's really cold I'm glad of the seat heaters for the first five miles or so. Must try one of those cheap preheaters now offered on ebay, will allow higher veg%s on short hops too.

 

In the days I was as likely to be driving a 2cv as a fast CX or Saab, I soon found that 9 times out of 10 a crappy heater could be improved no end with 20 or 30 minutes adjustment of cables, ducting and attachment of tight-fitting heater tubes, to the point they were generally very effective beyond traffic jams and would make up for any cabin dampness by supplying plenty of hot dried air.

 

But one cold night on the A1 the heater was neither sauna nor igloo-making, more volcanic. Foot to the floor and the speedo steadily approaching 70 up a long drag (from 80, because tailwind and previous downhill), sparks began flying up the windsceen. At first I imagined battery terminal to bracket interface and a hole somehow welded through the bonnet, then I realised said sparks weren't on the outside at all, but just an inch from my knuckles. Shit, obviously massive fire somewhere.

 

However, it seemed their production was directly controlled by my right foot, lift off and they vanished, pied a plancher and there they were again, my personal fireworks display. I soon realised what has happened, one of the exhaust manifold joints had loosened and fire which should've gone into the exhaust system was directed cabinwards. A couple of turns on the 11mm nuts on the hard shoulder and a note to self to always use anti-rattle washers even when they'd dropped into the grass was made.

[bub2006]

Interesting, mine is terrible in winter.

My robin was fantastic. It was shite when I bought it but flushed the rad, pipes,block and the heater matrix radiator too helped no end.

[Junkman]

The 405 can be either, that is to say you can have either full cool, or full hot air but nothing in between. I think something somewhere is sticky.

 

If 405 HVACs are in good working order, they are the best I ever experienced in a motor car. What fascinates me most is after what short distance since a cold start they begin to deliver warm air. Strictly heater speaking, my R16 is even better, but not entirely up there in the ventilation department. However, this was addressed in later models and I need to buy one of those just to gain first hand experience in that matter. It looks like the French used to put a lot of effort into their HVACs, just to replace it all with an impossible to operate menu guided touchscreen setup, like we had in a rental Peugeot something 08.

[DodgeRover]

I fitted an auxillary pump on the heater circuit of the transit and I have to say it does get toasty.

 

In a bizarre twist of fate my series landrover also had an excellent heater which was good as I would leave it running to melt the ice on the inside before driving away.

 

If you have a driveway I can recommend the fan heater on an extention for 5 minutes whilst you have a cuppa method of deicing.

[txe4]

My late, lamented Carina-E would do the "hot air on feet, cold air on face" thing. Magnificent bit of engineering.

 

The next step up in WIN is heated steering wheel to go with heated seats.

[loserone]

Surely the ultimate win is heating that starts before you even get out of bed so you can just get in in a t shirt no matter how frosty it is.

[Angrydicky]

The heater in the Clio is the best of any car I've owned. Like a blast furnace.

 

The Maestro is ok, then everything else is abysmal.

[catsinthewelder]

The 220 and 405 both have good heaters but due to the fact that my commute is downhill all the way they take 5 miles before warm air issues forth which is a bit of an embuggerance.  If its really cold I fire the 405 up then go back indoors for 10 minutes.  I need to fix the exhaust on the 220 before it gets this cold as currently I coast it 100yds downhill before firing up the engine to save waking the neighbours at 7am.

 

The 1310 has very little connection between its heater controls and any function so to switch it on you need to lift the bonnet.  The Discovery hasn't run for long enough to warm up for years as it always takes 10-15 mins to warm its sizable block.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

....My CX was always roasting hot. I never did decide if the heater was stuck on, or if the heat was coming off the transmission tunnel (C-Matic).

 

That might have something to do with the fresh air vents being shite.

[Guest]

The wee Shogun is great, heat within 1/4 of a mile, but the Vito is a brilliant winter vehicle. Eberspacher heater in the back so I can go out early and fire that up and the van is toasty when I'm good to go, could put a remote on it if I could be bothered. Webasto aux heater to aid fast engine warm up, and keep the temp up when idling, and a rest setting so if you shut the engine off, if keeps pumping the hot coolant round until it goes cool, then shuts off. Aircon too. Without all this its up to temp and blasting out hot air within a mile anyway. The later 639 Vitos and Sprinters had an electric element in the heater ducting to try and warm up the interior faster, but I've never found them to be any good.

 

Hottest heater I ever remember was a Datsun New Sunny. Proper furnace blast, and seemed to circulate that Datsun smell.

[HH-R]

Don't actually know what the heater is like in my car, I start to get really nauseus travelling with a heater on even if it's freezing cold outside. A/C on cold to the face year round.

[cros]

In my youth me and another yokel conducted a proper scientific test on the efficacy of the Reliant Supervan's heater. A fresh pig's testicle was secretly placed in each demister pipe of a work colleague's vehicle and we eagerly awaited his reaction. The entire winter passed without comment suggesting that the 3 wheeler's heater isn't up to much.

[Guest Hooli]

We once did that to work twat's car with kippers. He did notice & ended up selling it as the smell got into the plastics slightly*

[Lacquer Peel]

How good is the Skoda's heater?

[Andyrew]

Have to agree with vulg, Skoda Felicia Heater is similar to sitting next to the furnace from the home alone movies.

 

Suzuki sj heaters can be like this to but being such a drafty car it's a constant battle to keep the temp right.

 

Disco 300tdi takes so long to heat up, thankfully I have heated cow covered seats.

[yellowperil]

My heater on my truck at work, a proper pile of shite.

The heater works ok, but the fan doesn't.

I can't get any air to the windscreen on my side, if I put a piece of paper on the vent it won't even move.

In damp weather the windscreen and the drivers door are permanently steamed up, I have to have a bit of blue roll on hand to wipe it clear and wind the window down at every junction.

The fan has two positions, off and full blast, both wholly ineffective.

 

In sunny weather the whole cab is like a greenhouse, it has massive windows which aren't even tinted.

Even if it is snow outside i am being roasted every time the sun shines, usually i am down to just a t shirt in the winter, with the heater turned off.

No aircon either, so horrible.

 

The vehicle is a three year old Mercedes and has been like that since new.

 

A horrible place to spend your working week in.

[Guest Hooli]

I've just spent 15 minutes reading about how good the heaters are in cars I've never driven, which belong to people I've never met.

 

Christ, what am I doing with my life.....

 

Wining.